


WisdomTeeth

by H0LYxSHiP



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Best Friends, Brief Cameos by the other ROTG Characters, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Don't really honestly know how to describe this via tags...good writing though?, Emotional Baggage, I don't predetermine tops/bottoms, M/M, Narrated by Jack, Randomly Modernized References, Rating May Change, Told Partially through flashbacks, Whole Best Friends Never Quite Stay Just Friends Thing Going On, Yeahhh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 16:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1312102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/H0LYxSHiP/pseuds/H0LYxSHiP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was nothing easy about losing who you were, even if it was only for a little while; and his memories had long since fallen away like snowflakes—fast, fleeting, and frozen...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so in attempts to guiltily acquire more inspiration to finish this fic lol I am reposing it, I initially started it about a year, maybe two ago? Plus college is a bore at 5:57 in the morning, so what better to do than post fanfiction? 
> 
> For a lack of better things to write however, I'm just going to apologize, as I did the first time around for this fic, for it's horrendously uncreative title lol, please don't let it dissuade you from the quality of the actual story!
> 
> Warning; I'm an English major, with terrible grammar though, ironically, and tend to write in semi-long winded and ridiculously wax poetic, descriptive nonsense and witty back and forth banter dialogue. But it seems to work lol. ALSO, not gonna lie, I write very plot progressive stories, so I apologize for stage/scene setting beginning chapters! Also, when it comes to all that emotional complexity such and such, I can be mildly...depressing? I don't know hah people typically just point it out, not in a bad way of course, but I figure I should throw that out there?
> 
> I don't know haha it's six am, I'm rambling, and should probably sleep.
> 
> Final Note: this first part is super choppy short cause it was sort of a prologue-ish kind of thing before I decide which direction to take the fic.
> 
> OKAY. DONE NOW. PROMISE.  
> Enjoy :)

₩ⅈẟȡ❅ꟽ⧞₮∃ℇͳℌ  
⤛⟪•●•⟫⤜  
❮❰❬©ᶣ∀℘ȶ⧢ℝ⋮①❭❱❯ ℙʇ.❶ 

/technically half a chp./

 

* * *

 The baby teeth had come and gone, losing lateral incisors and coughing up canines like quarters for a gum-ball machine; the decision was as effortless as it was involuntary, and he'd spent them recklessly. Forming the fragments of enameled memories that soon decayed and fell away, they left a mouth of perfect pearly whites as secondary replacements. Although almost identical, they were impostors, and would never substitute what he'd lost. They were bigger and brighter than before, but where baby teeth had cavities carved throughout their curvatures, these had matured flawlessly and almost falsely. They were sturdy, but empty, holding nothing more than themselves in place.

Jack sighed, wishing there was more feeling to breathe in rather than the emptiness that kept him constantly composed within chambers of crystallized karma. "It's a bitch," frosted lips muttered aloud, kicking clumps of freshly fallen snow, and clenching his staff as if to transfer all the pressure. There was nothing easy about losing who you were, even if it was only for a little while; and his memories had long since fallen away like snowflakes—fast, fleeting, and frozen.

Grounding his teeth together in place of words he couldn't form, Jack felt his heart constricting into the catalyst of an upcoming cold front. When it rained, it poured—but when Jack Frost cried, everything froze. It was a terrible transition for a teenager; falling between the fissures of icebergs his emotions had formed.

They matched the literal masses he'd spread throughout the arctic in every way; they were jagged, imperfect, and deceiving. Breaking through the surface level just barely, Jack was only shown in his most simple form, disguising the true symmetry that moved slowly and undetected, always giving him the impression he was standing still. He had always underestimated himself, and so had the world; which left both at the mercy of momentum—a momentum with the strength to smother forests in unbroken strides and sink whole cities into the incalculable depths.

_I never meant for this to happen. I never_ ** _wanted_** _this to happen,_ pressured thoughts began pounding and Jack's eyes darted around the emptiness in search of something he knew he wouldn't find—a friend.

The word alone was enough to kill him, but immortality wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He had died once, but fate had something more formidable in mind, and instead of leaving him to rest in peace it shattered him in pieces. Disrupted and disoriented, every time Jack attempted to embody his past life, the entity refused him, and the struggle had eventually left him numb.

Somewhere beneath the pale, milky skin however, a heart still beat, almost mockingly, forcing him to remember he was still very much alive. _Life_ —he had never hated something so furiously, because somehow he felt as if he wasn't good enough for it. Why else would they have taken away his and then left him to live in this empty shell that had been outgrowing him for ages? It was supposed to be the other way around—you were supposed to grow up and grow out of things when they no longer fit—but somehow he had remained unchanging and the world outgrew him instead. He was like the extra piece to a puzzle that went out of print—he would never fit anywhere.

Drawing in another steady breath, he wished desperately to disappear, but the delicate, slender container clenched in his right hand was weighing him down. Five fingers furled around it even more tightly, and he could feel the intricate glass designs creating impressions against his skin. They were all there; all except for his Wisdom Teeth. The consequence of what he may find there never seemed to outweigh the risk of removing them, but he was beginning to lose sight of himself again, fearing that eventually he'd have no choice.

Turning the capsule in circles, thoughtfully in front of his face, several frosted auras of aquamarine traced its outlines as iridescent shades of indigo and amethyst rose and fell in a spectrum of shapes; his memories shifting around inside like images in a kaleidoscope. He knew them all by heart, knew ever still-frame, every living breathing second he once shared with them; but their presence was always fading; _his_ presence was always fading.

_You said you wouldn't ever leave me,_ Jack considered sadly, pressing his finger softly against a small, golden latch as the doors of multicolored glass popped open to reveal an array of old friends. Closing his eyes, the selection was performed at random, running his fingertip along the soft, smooth surfaces and then bracing himself when the motion stopped and one tooth sank through the red-velvet.

Elevating overhead in spectacular frequencies of light, Jack's vision fractured as they burst into flames around him, melting every inch of snow until he could see the whole island burning.

" _Get out of here," someone shouted through the smoke._

_Jack squinted his eyes, but couldn't see. "No. I won't leave you."_

" _It's not a fucking question," the other boy had shouted, more forcefully than ever before. "There isn't any time left."_

_Brown eyes clouded with combustion and Jack knew he was right, but his heart and his head had gone to war with each other, and all his limbs had been paralyzed in the crossfire. "I-I can't," he stuttered, his vocals betraying every syllable with fear._

_Met with an aggravated sigh, the face emerging more closely into his line of vision was torn between the time they never had, and the emotions they struggled to express. "I'm serious Jack, this isn't time for your antics, the whole island is burning, and people are_ **_dying._ ** _"_

_He knew that already, the smell of charring flesh was inescapable and was curdling throughout the air, mixing in with the swirls and flashes of smoke and fire surrounding them. "Let me come with you," he begged, losing sight of his confidence, and sinking under the weight of guilt._

" _No."_

" _Hiccup, please…"_

_Several skinny hands reached forward and slammed against the others chest, pushing him backward with a strength Jack couldn't remember him having. "GO," he screamed._

_Jack's eyes had gone helpless, "But—."_

" _NOW," he interjected, but Jack was somehow frozen amidst the heat._

" _You can't make me," he attempted to argue, but Hiccup was becoming Stoic more and more every day, and Jack couldn't keep up._

" _I swear to god Jack," there were tears beginning to form, as Hiccup struggled to remain in the false skin of his father that had never quite fit him, "I'm this close to letting Toothless blast you if you don't get the fuck out of here."_

" _Okay…" It was a soft sound, soft and sad, and so excruciating that it was unbelievable. He could hear the heavy puffs of steam come at him as the dragon broke into a forewarning grunt, transposing with the sound of the other's falling back as the legendary beast broke through their last remaining defenses, and spread forth a frayed canvas of leathery scales as the skeleton of wings shadowed every conceivable inch of Berk…_

" _I have to go," Hiccup's head shook away second doubts, jumping onto his dragon before Jack could open his mouth and dissuade him._

_His heart seemed to break, and he watched his best-friend ascend into the hurricane of inferno and electricity that crashed together in bursts of blue and clashed within a raging current of red. The struggle was snapping his heartstrings, and Jack ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction until his vision began to distort and the sights in front of him disappeared in little dots, until the world was black and he lost sight of everything…._

* * *

 

 

 


	2. Technically Pt. 2 Of Chapter One.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also: okay: so readers always tweak because I have a tendency to improperly use the word "several" but tbh I'm not going to stop anytime soon haha because it's TECHNICALLY, loophole rules correct, and I just like the way it sounds with a lot of the alliteration. 
> 
> SO; whenever you see anything; aka the most common examples probably being; several [insert color] eyes, several hands; I JUST MEAN TWO, lol TWO, regular, normal hands and eyes and pairs. And NOT that they have like ten of each.
> 
> wheeee. that's all for now.

**Chapter Two (But tech. it's pt. 2 to to chapter one, but for the sake of consistency I'm going to keep it as is)**

* * *

 

 

In one single, sudden flash the projection flickered away into a still-frame that faded out against reality; leaving Jack completely alone with his thoughts.  _Of all the memories_ , he shook his head disbelievingly,  _did it have to be that one?_  Did he have to remember what he'd done—what he'd caused? Hiccup would've told him yes, and he could almost hear the sweet, subtle seriousness in his voice, urging Jack to face the consequences of his actions.  _You were my consequence though,_  he reflected sadly,  _and I haven't been able to accept that in years._

Kicking up snow in furious bursts like a deranged woodland poltergeist, Jack watched the pure white consistency melt into soft earth and turn to slush. Shades of gray seemed to suit him, and although he had learned to like his new found knack for snow, the piercing purity often blinded him. Hunching his shoulders forward, he began to retrace his way around a narrow, winding pathway he had once known so well. They said once you leave home that you can never go back again—but Jack had never left, and part of him had never changed.

Born from Vikings and reincarnated from their folk-lore, Jack couldn't seem to leave Berk behind, couldn't stand to be away, couldn't handle losing the only thing he'd ever loved. But Hiccup had flown into the eye of the storm and Jack had followed, rushing forward onto the back of the first dragon he could find. It seemed like he was always chasing the boy down, since the first time they'd met it was a constant game of back and forth.

They were both tall, skinny, and slightly awkward—star-crossed friends from the beginning the way Hiccup told it, and Jack had always loved to agree. It was too perfect to last, and perhaps that was why Hiccup had crash-landed while Jack continued falling—why one had lost a leg, and the other a life.

Sighing, he stared through the evergreens at the lanky, five foot-eight mess of auburn hair and awkward smiles, hobbling along on his makeshift leg, completely unaware that he was being watched. Jack's breath caught in his throat as he began to walk closer, his heart never failing to beat faster, no matter how many times he'd done it before.

"Hey," he said softly, knowing it would evoke no response, ghosting sadly around the other boy in circles. Hiccup was smiling and it was breaking his heart, reaching his hand out gingerly, his fingers materialized into blue light as they collided with his skin. This never failed to happen, but Jack never failed to try.

**Three Years Earlier.**

" _It's f-freezing," Hiccup shivered._

" _Don't look at me!" Jack raised his hands defensively, "It wasn't my brilliant idea to get stranded in a snow storm."_

" _Well it's not like I_ ** _planned_** _this."_

_Jack laughed, "You're a walking disaster—"_

" _It's an occupational hazard—I know, I know," Hiccup said dismissively._

" _Don't be like that," the brunette crawled closer, closing the space between them._

_Hiccup shuffled away reluctantly, "Then don't be like this," he said nervously when he found Jack's left thigh pressed alongside his right._

" _Then don't make me want to," he purred._

_Groaning in frustration, several green eyes glared, "You're the worst best-friend ever."_

_Jack revealed a toothy grin, "Then I wouldn't be the best, would I?" he asked, snaking his arms suggestively around Hiccup's stomach. The other boy grinned innocently, staring up with eyes that drove Jack absolutely mad, but never said a word. Readjusting his grip, ever so slightly, the taller boy could feel the muscles contracting in his friend's stomach._

" _Why do you always do this?" he finally asked._

_Jack leaned closer. "Isn't it obvious?" He awaited the same answer he knew he was likely to receive._

_Hiccup withdrew this time, "S-should it be?"_

" _Why do you always have to play dumb," the brunette groaned, wishing this were easier to say._

" _Years of experience," the smaller boy replied dully._

_Sighing, Jack retreated, removing his arms, and re-folding them around his knees, which were drawn into his chest. "It really is bloody cold up here."_

" _Thank you for summing that up," Hiccup eyed him sarcastically, causing a more recognizable grin to form as Jack stuck his tongue out._

" _Thank you for being a total dick," the brunette repeated, his voice rising and falling identically with the recreation._

" _Because that comment was reasonable."_

_Jack received the words with a sarcastic eye-roll, and returned them with a slight, "Maybe you should try being less of all this," he worded in a way he knew the green-eyed boy abhorred._

" _Are you proud of yourself, Jack?"_

_The look in his eyes mirrored a disappointed parent, but Jack simply stared, unable to sit in such close proximity and be denied the simple pleasure that just weeks ago he'd begun to crave. It wasn't as if he had even done anything that out of the normal—they had been friends for longer than either could form finite memories, and so contact and closeness were like a package deal, but lately the other had been building up walls. Walls that even Jack couldn't always get around, but the red-head had always been better at getting under people's skin, while he himself had enough difficulty relating to anyone. He could hear Hiccup breathing, and repositioning himself closer, sensing his friends shift in seriousness._

" _You can still sit by me," Hiccup spoke up shyly, avoiding direct eye contact._

" _You told me to stop," Jack spoke coldly, evidently taking this as personally as Hiccup knew he would._

" _Well maybe I didn't mean it," his cheeks began to flood with color, leaving the other to interpret what it meant when even Hiccup was unsure why he'd begun to blush._

_However, it took no more than a millisecond for Jack's playful disposition to latch onto the words and run five miles farther with them then he should have; and a coy smile stitched itself heart-wrenchingly across his perfect bone structure, "You want me to keep you warm?"_

He missed warmth; he missed the intimacy and the heat that used to transfer so magnetically between them, and this time he hadn't needed his box of teeth to remember how easy it had been to get lost in each other; but lately, it felt like he was the one who was lost and that Hiccup had stopped looking.

* * *

 


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sort of a filler, context chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, holy crap, only began posting this in 2014? And actually started writing it in 2012? It's currently a few days shy of 2016, god I got so damn old, but more relevantly, I forgot I'd begun to put this story up on AO3, so for whoever still likes to peruse this fandom, I'll try and remember to put the rest of the chapters up, although, I've been stuck on the most recent one for multiple years and I swear I want to burn it to the ground sometimes lol (, just so many different chopped and screwed drafts that I've got no idea which to use slash have lost complete track of the differences etc etc, this is the biggest run on sentence ever in life. 
> 
> CHAPTER TIME. 
> 
> Thanks for humoring me.
> 
> Oh, PS, this is sort of a more so 'seriously' toned chapter, or better yet, a filler chapter for context and such, but I find throwing in flashbacks helps balance it out, so hopefully it's not too dull.

**Chapter Three.**

Forever seventeen and fashioned from an inexhaustible cache of clichés and consequences, Jack had developed a hard time taking himself seriously. For starters, let's take ' _Eternal Youth'—_ existing as, perhaps the most envied combination, any mere mortal would sell their soul just for the chance to obtain it, and yet here he was getting it for free.

Jack laughed bitterly—wasn't that ironic, he thought—trading a living, breathing life for a fixed, unchanging illusion? ...Yes, eternal youth  _appeared_ desirable, but it had come with its fair share of catches; a Guardianship and the Winter Solstice to be exact, the epitome of youthful preservation and the literary season of death and decline; thus marking the first of his inconsistencies.

The second followed, technically with a third, and the package deal produced the final bi-product of Jack's illogical existence. It were as if life and death had been forged into a staff instead of a scythe, and Jack had been deemed one of all trades—finding himself caught at a crossroads, intersecting at  _'unhindered authority'_ and  _'tactless control.'_

it was more power than he'd ever had over anything, and more responsibility than he'd ever been suited for; yet, suddenly, there he stood— _A Guardian—_ a protector. Always too quick to discredit himself, unable to see any silver lining, Jack sighed,  _but that hardly seems like a title fit for a failure._ He couldn't help it—nothing made sense—and no one could tell him just quite who he was anymore, but somehow they were still telling him who to be. The pressure was devastating. 

It was a time for balance in which none existed. Within three years, you'd think that he'd at least started to  _'get over it'_ —although the phrase melted from his mind and into soft, angst filled breaths; exhaling rigidly against the air as if to secure whatever dignity hadn't drown beneath the 95% accuracy of a flash flood of flaws that still lapped and pooled around his feet. How was this still breaking him down? He wondered answerless, three years should have been everything—should have made or broken him—but somehow he'd managed to stay whole—almost. 

It felt as if they'd done everything possible to refuse him even the most basic elements of himself. Replacing a set of warm, inviting brown eyes with a pair of paralyzing, unnatural, and offsetting blue ones instead, while his hair had been stripped of all its color and allowed to exist in the absence of it, framing ghost-like strands around his forehead, falling messily across into his eyelashes. 

He'd kept his name sure—but what for?  _So I can sign up for the fantasy book club?_ The thought formed acrimoniously as the youth mocked the metamorphosis that had taken every mechanical, sensible, and physical law out of existence. Because reincarnation always came back metaphysically, none of the physical principles were needed any longer, and attention to detail had been lost. Sighing, Jack could sense himself derailing, fighting freely against the futile desire to recede from his preposition, but found he was still fixed and frozen on a one way track. 

Destined to live only in the past, Jack realized that all he did now was exist; however, the deeper significance faded into scattered flurries, compliments of his newly, non-refundable vocation. The introspection had formed intricate webs to ensure him, but the snow gave him clarity in the purest form of foresight. He supposed it made perfect sense, all these conclusions he fell just a breath short of confirming, but Jack fought helplessly against them like a screaming newborn. 

Three years ago he'd been both constructed  _and_ broken down—three years ago he'd been the way he'd been since birth—the year after that, he'd been half a corpse at the bottom of a lake. Then...Then, on the cusp of the autumn equinox, they'd come for him at last. Who  _they_ were, he had never fully grasped; although, dead, lifeless, and two years drown, he had sensed the eerie whisper of life come and go. 

Jack closed his eyes and then reopened them, trying to see if anything had changed. He pinched himself next, but retracted dejectedly when his skin was still cold. Even when he finally admitted the things that had happened, Jack found no harmonious coexistence, just the lingering expressions of self-doubt and over speculation. He hadn't been this person in his whole life, but the disillusioned boy had been forced to focus on the symbolic now that the literal world had fallen from his grasp; however, the ideology refused him just as effortlessly as reality always had. 

Three—in and of itself fit together—it was supposed to be the perfect balance, symbolizing the cyclical concept of life in its three, primary phases—creation, destruction, and preservation. They moved in cycles like the seasons, their speeds were all relative and they were hardly predictable, unsound in their stations, but unfailing in their repetition—the symbolism of three should have saved him, but Jack felt as if nothing applied to him anymore. Sighing, however, as he lost gradual details to thick blankets of white, Jack tried to remember what it felt like—to  _truly_ be cold—to truly feel...well, anything. 

 _Is it not enough to simply_ _exist?_ Jack's staff spun expertly overhead— _or was all this redecorating really necessary as well?_ his metaphysical state of mind melted down the clichés into a series of contradictions once more. They had given him a healthy body that would forever function accordingly, but he would never grow. They expected him to protect, but left him defenseless. Expected him to find his center when they had left nothing but a hole...

And worst of all—they expected him to move on—when he'd never let go.  _They expect too much and give too little_ , Jack thought selfishly, knowing full well that he was overcompensating for a series of emotions that he was unwilling to show. Instead, he fell backward, weightlessly into the snow with a  _crunch_ , and began to move his arms and legs in methodical motions.

_"Snow angels?" Hiccup asked, standing overhead. "Really, Jack?"_

_The other boy stuck out his tongue and continued to spread the snow into a celestial shape._

_"What's the point?" Hiccup shrugged, never seeing value in the_ _unnecessary. "You're just going to ruin it anyways."_

_"Thanks for summing that up," Jack quipped in a nasally voice._

_"I don't sound like that," the other argued defensively._

_"Hmm" Jack's arms flapped back and forth. "Whining, complaining, and never satisfied? I thought it was rather convincing."_

_Hiccup nudged him playfully, "Shut up."_

_"Don't ruin it!" Jack yelled, staring straight up, trying to locate his friend within such a limited range._

_A pair of bright green eyes popped out over his, drawing Jack's backward, then straight up, unflinching. "Or what?"_

_Never one to be easily outfoxed, Jack's face twisted up with a cross between a scowl and a pout. "Or I'll ruin **you** ," he threatened unconvincingly. _

_"Says the person making snow angels," Hiccup grinned, still upside down in Jack's eyes._

_"Oh, whatever," he ignored the banter-battle that he was clearly losing today. "Toothless makes them all the time."_

_"Toothless is a dragon, Jack."_

_"A dragon who appreciates the art of snow angels," Jack smirked, grinning over to the large black mass snuggling every which way against the snow. "Isn't that right buddy?"_

_The dragon snorted delightedly, always as in tune with Jack as he was with Hiccup, continuing to curl into his contorted disfiguration of a cherub._

_Hiccup rolled his eyes, "Who knew both my best-friends would turn out equally as immature."_

_Jack and Toothless grunted in unison. "And who knew you'd always be such a stick in the mud."_

_"Well," several hands repositioned around slender hips. "Some of us in the **real** world have responsibilities—unlike you two."_

_Jack lifted his arms, holding his hands out to Hiccup who gathered them in his intuitively. "You callin' me cold blooded?" he asked, glancing back at Toothless with a 'no-offense' smile as he was pulled forward._

_Hiccup grinned coyly as Jack found his feet. "Well, you're certainly no angel."_

_They were standing a centimeter apart, hands still tangled in an awkward set of fists. "What am I then?" Jack coaxed on, challenging the eye contact._

_"Ah—" Hiccup paused with his mouth in mid-air, closing it softly as his eyes began to study the question more seriously._

_Flooding with color, the other boy gently let go of the hands he didn't realize he was still holding and stepped back uncomfortably, because this side of Hiccup always scared him a little. It was the side that could get so serious—so certain—the side that could reach down so deep into a person and pull out something they never knew was there. Jack swallowed. "Well..." he prompted the over-extended pause, then nervously tried to take it back. "Never mind, Hiccup, I'm just..."_

_"Perfect."_

_"...being sarcastic," Jack trailed off, losing his words almost as quickly as his volume. Pausing, swallowing, and turning towards the ground, he managed to ask, "What did you say?"_

_Smiling widely, warmly, and way too whimsically, Hiccup glanced shyly from Jack to the undisrupted outline he'd left imprinted flawlessly in the snow in front of them. "I said," he cleared his throat, "That I think you're perfect."_

Frowning downward at the huge, hideous handprint and disheveled symmetry of snow where his feet had attempted to stand clear of his creation, Jack kicked the rest of the angel away with tears in his eyes. "Well you were wrong," he cursed, discouraged by the differences.  _I'm not perfect,_ he stared down at the avalanche of angst and snow he'd left in place of completion.  _I'm a disaster._

The thin, salty serum quickly crackled though, and crystallized into place, forming little diamond dew-drops in the corners of his eyes. For the life of him, he couldn't seem to cry, and the inability both laughed and cursed him at the same time.  _"Who knew both my best-friends would turn out equally as immature."_ The sentence escaped into his train of thought without warning.  _That's me alright_. He bit his bottom lip so hard it began to bleed.  _Jack-The-Never-Serious—Jack-The-Can't-Handle-Commitment—Jack-The-Start-Acting-Your-Age-Already—_ all the things that he'd been told countless times, and all the things that had been turned against him in this cruel twist of fate. 

 _"You really don't get it—do you Jack?"_ The sage-like voice rose in the steady rustling of the underbrush, fading in and out of his reach, and subduing his senses in a swaying rhythm like hypnosis. The bark on the trunk of an old oak began to bend and buckle beneath the weight of ancient sorcery, unfolding into the outlines of a familiar face. The knot in the tree protruded overhead like the hood of a cloak, and several branches bent and folded into fingers that intertwined thoughtfully. 

Jack glanced towards the featured carved throughout the rough curvatures and locked eyes challengingly with Father Time. "Get  _what_?" he sneered uncooperatively. "That you've successfully ruined my life? No, thanks, I got that part."

The tree creaked, groaning as a steady gust of wind released a sigh. " _Arrogance is what got you here Jack—and unchallenged, it will keep you here."_

"Wonderful," Jack paced in circles. "So, I couldn't even die correctly, is that what you're trying to tell me?"

The entity, however, ghosted through the spitefulness and ensued the spirituality the boy had never understood.  _"Death has nothing to do with it."_

"Of course not," crystal eyes rolled back as he turned to holler, "Because that would only  _make sense!"_

_"You're running out of time..."_

"For what!" Jack shouted. "Why won't you just tell me what you want from me!" His vocals tore helplessly though the air, but like the trees, the spirit was ancient and unmoving—impossible to sway with immediacy when it was built with age and grown in time. 

 _"You're running out of time,"_ the words echoed, plaguing the boy with endless repetition.  _"If you cannot find the meaning of life, then living is only the absence of death,"_ the enlightenment rolled around him in an eminent whisper,  _"And if living is simply not dying—then you merely subsist."_

 _I only exist,_ Jack recalled from earlier, trying to tie it into the philosophical ramblings of Father Time that never made any sense to him. No thought was safe however, and the ancient wielder of providence stole Jack's effortlessly. 

_"And you will only ever exist until you learn your center—until you establish a source of gravity, Jack, then the pieces shall float amiss."_

"What pieces!?" Jack demanded, frequently searching for something sound in all the voice was saying. "And I keep telling you, I  _have_ a center!" he argued, flustered with keeping all the questions and instructions straight. "Fun," he stated, "I'm the Guardian of  _Fun_."

 _"And how much_ fun _are you having, Jack?"_

The question stung, swelling his pride insufferably, and slipping past his lips in a silent, "None..."

_"Then you have lost yourself Jack Frost, and also, never truly discovered yourself."_

"But...I'm...I'm—"

 _"More than just an adjective,"_ Father Time interrupted, the sky dimming and clouding in sync with his seriousness.  _"You must learn to express the world in more than merely words and titles. Life is not an association Jack, it's a full time commitment."_

"Am I the only one who remembers the whole  _dead_ thing?" Jack fumed, feeling taunted, and unrightfully mocked. "How do you expect me to  _feel_ anything?"

 _"Jack, Jack, Jack,"_ the tone turned parental and the face began to disappear.  _"There is a clock that ticks for all of us, but where some stop, other's turn back—just as the ending of one life gives birth to another."_

"So...you're telling me I've been...reset?" He blinked, envisioning the chambers of his heart coiling into the cogs of a pocket watch.

 _"Rewound,"_ the voice corrected, fading even farther.  _"You are both racing and retracing,"_ the articulation phrased cryptically.  _"You are both the future and the past,"_ the complexities intertwined.  _"But time waits for no one, Jack. And your hands have fallen into place...the rest might outrun you, but the present is catching up, and there are only so many numbers you can hide behind until you too have lost your face..."_

"Wait!" his voice broke against the echo that effortlessly overshadowed his desperation. "Please—don't go yet! I still don't..."

 _"Understand..."_ the barely audible response blended into the barrage of dead leaves as they blew backwards and fell lifelessly.  _"Remember the words Jack—remember and you will..."_

Then silence. Absolute silence.

Jack collapsed, knees in the snow, with his whole body bent forward, hands pressed deeply in imprints. Since before he could remember, after his reawakening that his, these strange and surreal visits had been taking place. Even though he was estranged from the Guardians, Father Time had played a paternal role in their upbringing—although, crotchety old grandfather suited him much better in Jack's opinion. 

Never content with parlor tricks, the ageless entity always spoke in a series of rhymes and riddles, convinced that the core of higher learning came from the ability to interpret and perceive. However, Jack found it more than just  _difficult_ to praise the wisdom of words that plagued him from the moment he'd awaken, all covered in phosphorescent plankton, to this very second where he sat pale and plastered.

 _Clock, face, time, hands..._ Jack attempted to string everything together into bullet points, but found the meaning lost within too many metaphors—metaphors that had absolutely nothing to do with the last time they'd spoken. Sighing, Jack considered the previous encounter, hearing the nursery rhyme rhythm run through his head instantly before letting it roll off his tongue. 

 _"Water weighs, while matter sinks,"_ he began slowly. " _Displace the value, the missing link—"_ Jack remembered systematically. " _That floats above, in drifting shards, but cannot freeze a house of cards..."_

But he rolled his eyes unreceptively, just because it rhymed didn't mean it made sense, and he'd established quiet a distaste for poetics.  _Water weighs?_ he thought,  _what the hell was that supposed to mean? Weigh—what? ...just... **weighs**?_

Then he shook his head. " _Weighs **down** , stupid,"_ Hiccup's phantom voice of reason reappeared,  _"That's why the matters **sinking**." _ Even in his subconscious, Hiccup was still unspoken and unfailing, but Jack could've really used a friend right now, one that could step outside the restrictions of thought.

Sheepishly unsure of who else to trust, Jack closed his eyes, as if maybe it could cancel out the reality of his right foot falling in a swift, two-step tap that provoked an almost instantaneous echo of thumping.

"This had better be good, mate."

Hesitantly, Jack reopened his eyes, one at a time, realizing E. Aster had arrived in record time. "I..." he began in a self-conscious sputter, unsure of what he even intended to say.

"Well, out with it then," Bunny tapped his foot impatiently, always cautious of Jack's intentions. 

The rest came out as quietly as snow falling. "...I didn't know who else to go to..."

Eyebrows furrowed, and the Australian took a hesitant hop forward, "Mate? Is everything..."

"No." Jack's voice caught unbelievingly, and cracked under pressure. "No, it's not," he sniffled, still unsure of how Bunny would receive all this after months had gone by between their last visit.

Much to his surprise, the rabbit caught Jack's falling features sadly. As the Guardian of Hope, he recognized a lack there of just as easily. Like an easter egg hidden for a small child, the look on the boy's face was too obvious to ignore. "Is it the nightmares again?" the elder asked softly. "I thought they'd gone away by now. Have you asked Sandy—"

"It's not that," Jack shook his head childishly, always feeling half his age whenever Bunny traded their playful banter for soft spoken words. 

"Well, what then?" he rested a paw on the boy's shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. "You know you can tell me..."

And that's when Jack collapsed into the mess of fur crying—too shaken by the actual contact that he shattered with one touch. "He said I'm running out of time," came the muffled fragments as his arms held on as tightly as they could to something solid. "Please, I don't want to disappear," his face pressed closer, "don't let me disappear."

Caught off guard by the embrace, Aster paused before putting the pieces together. "Who did?" he asked calmly, rubbing Jack's back soothingly as he tactfully forced conversation in place of crying.

"F-father Time."

"Ahh, good ol'  _Tick'n'Tock_ himself," Bunny nodded in understanding. "Let me guess—still haven't solved ya' riddle?"

Jack slumped backward out of the embrace, embarrassed. "Exactly," he sighed, before stumbling into a long winded explanation that Bunny sat patiently all the way through. 

In theory, he supposed they were an unseemly pair, but opposites had never stopped attracting for Jack, and he found the most unusual friendship in his equinoctial opposite. While Jack had occupied the Autumnal, Bunny had been initiated during the Vernal Equinox—making them opposite and yet the same. Supporting the seasons of life and death, they held an unspoken bond that eluded the other Guardians, and brought them closer than either had imagined . It was the closet thing Jack had found to a friend; but even then, Bunny had always acted more like the father he couldn't remember having. 

Sighing, Aster pushed himself back upright after Jack had dwindled off in conclusion. "Y'know I can't solve this for ya' mate," he offered sympathetically, always internally conflicted over the boy's suffering that never seemed to end. 

"I know," Jack responded softly, features downcast and drown in emotion. 

"Mine wasn't easy either," he continued his attempts to empathize, but the truth was, Jack's riddle had been more complex than all the other Guardians combine, and he hadn't the faintest idea how to deconstruct the meaning. "But keep ya' chin up, because it isn't hopeless, they all have answers, mate."

"But what if I can't find mine in time?" Blue eyes poured into vibrant viridian shades that reminded him so very much of Hiccup's. "What if I disappear?"

"Ya' not going ta disappear," Aster assured him protectively, "Don't think for a second I'd let ya' get off that easy, do ya?"

Jack cracked a faint smile, "No, I guess not."

"That's it," Bunny nodded, more enthusiastically, "Now buck up mate, and try not to look so miserable—it doesn't suit ya' in the slightest." 

"Only if you stop being so damn nice," the grin grew, falling back into more playful routine, "I'm starting to think you've been huffing a little too much egg dye."

"Oh, bugger that," Bunny took a swat, returning the grin in a mutual understanding as he summoned the warp zone beneath his feet. "Take care Jack," he smiled once more, and then disappeared down into a labyrinth of twisting tunnels. 

Sighing, Jack stepped away from their conversation feeling, if anything, relieved.   _For now at least,_ he considered dimly, until the actuality sank back in and drown him within the unreliability of reassurance. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos, reviews, they're very much welcome, and I'd be much obliged, lol not that I've been a good updater to deserve such sentiments, but if perchance you find the time, or enjoy what you see, drop me a line :)


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just an fyi, def. jumped back into lolling mode for this chapter, or more simply, it's kind of light in comparison to the prior. ALSO: lol, feel free to ask me wtf their weird conversation flashback means (from when they're small) if it doesn't make any sense, I jotted down a side note to myself saying 'unless you get the wording just right it doesn't make sense," but my present self thinks it makes perfect sense, albeit that note sidetone was ALSO written in 2012  
>   
> Seeing as I've been M.I.A for, seemingly, eons, I figure I owe you guys at least two or three concurrent chapter updates, as well as, in part, to gauge whether or not anybody's even bothering with the whole ROTG/HTTYD fandom/fics anymore. Or this story for that matter lol, sometimes even I go back and forth about it, but that's mostly me being over critical, getting older, and realizing I've lost any semblance of grammatical accuracy. AYE. 
> 
> Enjoy. Maybe. Hopefully. Probably. Possibly?

 

**●(¯`·._(_.·´¯`·._.»Chapter Four«._.·´¯`·._)_.·´¯)●**   

As Jack stared unfamiliarly through eyes as blue as the ocean, and as transparent as he was, the boy was forced to shield them from the unchanging skyline. Although overcast with opalescent shapes, it was emitting powerful frequencies and causing his head to cloud with spectrums that had once refused his darker shades. "Eyes like icicles and hair like hoarfrost," Jack strung the words together like a nursery rhyme, then rolled his eyes. As if being condemned to a life of wintertime wasn't bad enough, they'd given him a dress code—permanently.  _And not so much as a casual Friday,_ Jack thought incredulously, shaking his head and swatting his staff aimlessly in the air. 

Still grieving the absence of enlightenment and the loss of situational clarity, the previous day left Jack at stage one of seven:  _Shock and Denial._ The idea of solving his riddle reminded him too much of his teeth—and it was just too much memory to force upon oneself that the very idea had overloaded, then melted his brain. 

He knew the "words" he must remember—in fact, they were hard to forget when each line and every letter curved eloquently in crystallized cursive, wrapping in a translucent spiral around the length of his staff. He knew which knots to press his palms against too, how to close his eyes and open his mind until a brilliant flash of blue illuminated the words into script. 

However, that was the beauty of denial Jack had decided smugly, relishing in the opportunity to rediscover the bliss of ignorance he was once acclaimed for emitting. Instead, rather than fall victim to actuality, Jack fell into footage of his favorite distraction—Hiccup. Who else? If anything could possibly take his mind and tweak it to a different setting, that skinny little twig was the only surefire solution. 

Summoning a soft snowstorm, delicate flakes fell in intricate patterns, dusting over every conceivable surface as Jack searched for fingerprints of past crimes from forgotten times; his memory was all around him, and Jack realized it was probably misleading to say he'd forgotten all of it. It was only the pivotal, life-changing things that he'd lost to dental hygiene, although the moment he said it, Jack wished he'd flossed more—maybe then they wouldn't have been gone so quickly. Wouldn't have fallen so fast and far removed from the precious moments neither his mouth nor his mind held any longer. 

Walking casually through the dirt and cobblestone pathways of Berk as they wound indistinguishably through the forest and the village beneath the collecting weight of snow, Jack was in constant search of evidence. Arguably, almost every inch of the terrain was covered in overlapping sets of prints and identifiable moments, but with his finicky memory, every round was like a game of  _Russian Roulette._ There were always six available slots, the same as Jack always had options, but only one was ever spring loaded to shoot him in the face. And this time the bullet hit him right between the eyes with the most fundamental fragment of his childhood, almost amazed he'd kept it to himself after all these years. 

Pulling his foot out of a rotten, half petrified squash (which he was still confused as to why he didn't just go right through), a wrinkled waver wriggled his lips into an irrepressible smile.  _And to think we became best-friends over vegetables,_ Jack grinned, transposing the scenery around him with the spliced, still-frames surfacing in his mind. 

They were the first two little tikes to be dropped off at the daycare that, believe it or not, Gobber used to run as part of his fulfillment for his duties as the "Youth Resources" representative. Although it  _did_ eventually expand and lead to dragon training, Jack was always convinced Stoick had made the whole position up just to keep Hiccup out of his hair. And so Jack had always loved Hiccup for being a handful, or else they may have never met. 

_No more than a centimeter off in height, and only a mere six inches away from one another, they looked practically identical if it weren't for their eyes. Skinny as can be, seven year old Hiccup swung his legs back and forth beneath the bench and scooted closer to the boy he'd never seen before who couldn't stop shaking his foot._

_"I'm Hiccup."_

_"I'm adopted."_

_"Nah," Hiccup waved it off dismissively, "Cause this one time, my dad was all 'you're adopted,'" he mimicked. "And then so I was like, 'you're **stupid** '...except my dad's name is Stoick" he shrugged conclusively. _

_"Dad's are idiots, I think," Jack laughed, "cause my step-dad's all old and can't remember anything, so he reminds me like, **everyday**! And I'm like, 'okay, well thanks a lot dummy, tell me something I don't know!"_

_"Hah-hah, seriously!" Hiccup's hands shot above him excitedly, " **Total** idiots!"_

_" **So** stupid," Jack continued, "that they don't even  **know** how stupid they are!" eyes bulged unfathomably, then wrinkled into the bridge of his nose in confusion. "Cause mine usually looks really Im—impressted..." he paused, "Yeah, that's right, impressted," the brunette nodded. "He always looks really impressted with himself."_

_"Oh my god, oh my god! I know **exactly** what look you mean!" Hiccup bounced, enthralled at the idea someone wanted to talk to him for once. "It's like they think they're better cause they're big or something," he began to gesture dramatically with a  deep voice, "It's like,  **'hello, notice I'm wearing a pointy hat and have very broad shoulders for a man with a mustache. Rawr, rawr, rawr!** "_

_"So true!" Jack screeched, "After work my dad like screams at me like it's **my** fault he has to go," his eyes widened sarcastically, "Like, good job dad, sorry I'm SEVEN!"_

_"Do they want a gold star or something?"_

_"For real," Jack agreed. "What babies."_

_Hiccup shook his head, "I don't ever want to be like that."_

_"Me neither," Jack announced, narrowing his eyes, "I heard," he began seriously, glancing back and forth secretively, before leaning over in a whisper, "that old people's brains turn into vegetables!"_

_"Gross!" Hiccup threw a zip-lock bag at the ground, staring at his carrot sticks in horror. " **NOT** cool, Grandpa! Why don't you try staying dead next time!" he leaned over them, stomping with his foot._

_Jack nodded, "That means we'll have stupid brains too."_

_" **And** we're eating  **old people** ," the redhead stuck out his tongue. "They taste  **horrible**."_

_"Like wrinkles and sadness."_

_Hiccup shook his head angrily, "No **wonder** they said grandpa went to live on his 'farm'."_

_"All lies."_

_" **All** lies," the other nodded in agreement. _

_The brunette beamed suddenly, "I like you!"_

_The other_ _shrugged, "Me too."_

_"No, stupid, you're supposed to say you like me too."_

_"Oh," Hiccup hesitated self-consciously, "well then, I like you too!"_

_"Wanna be friends?"_

_"Only if you do," the smaller boy said shyly._

_"Good," the brunette smiled widely, shoving his hand forward into Hiccup's and shaking it up and down, "I'm Jack."_

_Hiccup's face twisted in an unreceptive, blank sort of confusion, "...I thought you said your name was Adopted?"_

The conversation faded off almost as quickly as it had come to him, losing continuity within the nonsensical discussions they'd had as children—too old for their own age group and constantly engaging some debate or crusade against the world. Jack was still grinning about Hiccup being convinced his name was literally  _adopted_ and how he used to think the expression 'being a vegetable' was literal, causing himself and Hiccup both to abandon eating them for months, convinced they would turn old. 

"Hiccup!" A girl's voice ghosted straight through Jack's train of thought, causing his eyes to roll uninhibitedly.  _Astrid._

Now, in his own defense, he didn't hate her. Jack was just merely, impulsively jealous of every waking minute they spent together—that wasn't hatred though, right? He thought humorously.  _Nah, Astrid's a good shit,_ he shook his head, choosing not to watch as Hiccup greeted her with the usual embrace. It wasn't his fault, Jack had told himself this a hundred time, he was gone and she was there. It's not like he expected Hiccup's entire life to stop just because he wasn't in it, but sometimes it hurt to know how easily he'd accommodated the absence.

And as he was walking back towards the sanctity of his seclusion, Jack realized another bullet lodged in his back, locking eyes with the shadowy corner that crept and wound around to the back of Hiccup's house. Jack sighed. They used to roll around each other so easily, and yet with infinite struggle; but their collisions happened more often than not, frequently ending in a simultaneous tangle of teeth and fists.  _That was the first time actually_ , he made the gentle correction, stopping to consider the first crossed boundary between them, as well as delicate dental outline that had survived across his shoulder in a faint, but visible scar. 

_"Get off of me," Hiccup shoved back forcefully._

_Jack didn't listen. "I don't want to."_

_"You're being weird again," Hiccup insisted, his back pressed against the side of the house with Jack's every outline pressed up against him._

_"Just this once," Jack leaned in closer, "don't fight it so hard."_

_The emerald eyed teen had gone quiet, shivering beneath the grip around his wrists as it_ _transferred sensually to his waist, "Jack," he stammered, evasively pressing flat against the surface._

_Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place, Jack grinned, repeating the boy's name twice as softly. "Hiccup."_

_"I don't—" his voice cracked as Jack's other hand shifted towards his stomach to join the one riding dangerously close to his hips, holding him fixedly, "I don't know if this is a good..."_

_"It's a great idea," Jack murmured against his lips, closing his eyes as he sank into the sweet unfamiliarity of the other's mouth._

_Breathless and paralyzed, Hiccup's eyes fluttered before shutting, overtaken by the sudden softness parting and pressing so unfairly; releasing a frustrated groan when teeth pulled gently at bottom lip and wrapping his fists around Jack's forearms to keep from collapsing._

_Tightening and loosening his grip involuntarily, Jack finally pulled away, out of breath and feigning confidence to cover his evident embarrassment._

_The boy across from him was bright red, the coloration causing his freckles to pop twice as vibrantly across the deepening shade cascading over the bridge of his nose. "Fuck you," he shook his head flustered, delivering a swift fist that Jack caught, and then tumbled them into a brawl of black eyes and bite marks._

Walking away from the scene, Jack was flushed and bubbly off the adrenaline rush, but shaking his head discouragingly at the idea that perhaps if he'd had some self-control, then maybe they'd still be together now instead of on opposite sides of two way glass. Sighing and kicking up snow as he continued his descent, he began to chant, "And there went the Jack without a Jill, tumbling back downline an  _asshole_ -," he chimed in with a sing-songy voice, "because he couldn't even follow the first part of the song, chasing after some green eyed boy instead of fetching that fucking pail of water."

_Old habits die hard, right?_ Jack considered mischievously, focusing unintentionally on one word in particular,  _and it sure as hell wasn't 'die.'_ His grin grew as excitably as the rest of him. What could he say? Maintaining his peak physical existence hadn't been all bad, leaving Jack with much and more relief that least he could keep  _something_ in working condition. Although he groaned aloud at the thought of spending another night with himself—as if he were some girl who'd grown too persistent. And all the excitement of contact had become lost as the repetition grew rusty under familiar techniques and no one to help expand his horizons. 

_Hell, I'd **take** a girl right now, _ a devilishly self aware smile stood to amuse him for the brief moment before the substitute could no longer compete with the frustration. Not that relieving himself was some intricate, ballroom dance requiring extensive instruction and complex, multi-stepped skills; quiet the opposite, the  _five-knuckle-shuffle_ came as naturally as having a hand, and every boy over the age of eleven had formed the partnership. He knew himself well enough to get where he needed to go, but was beyond bored with cold hands that refused to play fair; only every interested in the immediacy, and nothing emotional whatsoever. 

_Damn that fucking day to hell,_ he recalled the previous mental still frames into focus.  _If I'd just listened for **once** in my life instead of never letting go—just like I always do. _Always  _did_ , the thought corrected itself as Jack unthinkingly repeated it aloud, systematically trying to omit words like "always" and "forever" from his vocabulary. See, always and forever were fuel for the living, but to him they were a prison. They seemed so generous when you were waiting for the inevitable, but they were much too long for someone without an expiration date. 

_And lucky me,_ Jack gestured downwardly at himself in a way similar to how Hiccup would've,  _I'm totally nonperishable!_ The sarcasm came pouring out and yet he was far too frozen to ever grow warm within the heat of laughter—and god did he miss those laughs. His thoughts retracted reflexively towards his friend. Those strange, so often sassy or shy smiles that Jack loved so much that sometimes he wanted to punch them right off his face, but always wound up with more _creative_ ways to pull the smile off Hiccup's lips instead. 

Howbeit, even in his own mind, the lack of consent made him feel invasive. Probably because everything he  _did_ was invasive—even some of his own thoughts must be provoked to be produced, he considered dully with respect to his box of teeth—although the ill-fitting advantage wouldn't replace or remove the mental images he kept carefully hidden away, like flawless centerfolds tucked between his mattress.  The comparison, if nothing else, created a focal point to fix on while dealing with the details as they merge and collided with the result; and for a moment, the advances on himself were almost as innocent as when they'd taken place between more than just the imagery in his brain. 

_This should be illegal_ , Jack considered with moderate guilt when he'd finally lost the forty-five minute battle with his pants. Jack  _Frost?_ he contemplated humorously, would've been more accurate if they changed it to - _Off._ Although there was something offsetting about the usually routine process; for one thing, invisible or not, he simply undid himself where he'd been sitting underneath a large, snow swept awning, and thought about how wrong, and yet awkwardly arousing it was at the same time. Then, secondly, straying, he wondered if this was considered necrophilia?—after your body had grown cold in the veins—or perhaps they made exceptions for the living dead.

However, no amount of useless questions regarding his latest "shuffle" would dissuade the substance of the matter, which couldn't simply be ejected. Was it wrong to use his friend as the baseboard to a fantasy he knew he'd never have?

_Sigh_ , and there went another one of those words again—"never." That one was the worst, although he would not sit and tarnish Hiccup's memory anymore because of it. Hiccup deserved more than pleasanties, he deserved Jack's genuine respect, regardless of the separation. Suddenly cross as he shot a disapproving scowl somewhere off to the side,releasing a resentful  _tsk'ing_  noise.  After god knows how many thousands and thousands of years worth of dictating the ebb and flow of fate, you'd think the simple notion of jarring up a seventeen year old boy's hormones and letting them age would send up a  _huge_ red flag. Or  _at least_ the  _decency_ to consider that it was PROBABLY a bad idea. Scratch that, the  _worst_ idea. 

But,  _no,_ Jack had been left with the same insatiable curiosities, the same nagging urges—the same  _everything_ —which he would consider himself lucky for if...well, let's not repeat the process... Jack abandoned all trials of testosterone and left all his day dreams in a nice, single file row—execution style—almost  _wishing_ Pitch would claim them. For now, Jack just wanted to be alone, what an ironic slice of denial he'd tried to feed himself with. However, before alone had turned so literal and involuntary,  _being alone_ meant Hiccup. 

Undoing the latch on the back door, the one that was always loose and catching before it locked, Jack pressed forward softly. Slipping past the rest of the obstacles undetected was easy, and yet he couldn't help himself from pausing to take in all the old, familiar details. This place was once a second home to him, and Jack missed it more than he could manage to express. 

Hiccup's room was the hardest to revisit, had it really been so long? At first, these secret little visits had been as routine as breathing, but sooner or later, all the oxygen had left the room, and the whole process became suffocating. The same kind of constrictive pressure Jack could feel around his throat as he pulled back the heavy comforter and crawled undetected alongside his friend. 

"I missed you today," Jack whispered, curling his knees into his stomach, watching the gentle spurts of air from Hiccup's half open mouth hit the icy chill of his own and turn to steam. Reaching out, as to brush back a few fallen strands of auburn, like he had a thousand times before, he'd forgotten himself as the finger lengths fell short of a surface, ghosting straight through his skin. Sighing, Jack curled more closely into what he couldn't touch, pulling the blanket cover over the both of them when Hiccup began to shiver, teeth chattering ever so slightly against the proximity between them. "I wish I could be a better friend," he continued, feeling his nose begin to clog as the swelling of tears flooded his voice, "but we both know how much I suck at keeping my promises," he choked, laughing involuntarily in place of the one he would've received if Hiccup could hear him. 

Rolling backward, staring up at the ceiling, several balled up fists rubbed furiously at the fast freezing flooding around his eyes that continued to thaw and congeal in a simultaneously unproductive motion. He could hear the steady automatic breathing come as systematic as the double-beaitng of the heart— _lub-dub, lug-dub; in-out, in-out._ It was hypnotizing, and Jack had forgotten how easily he could still fall asleep around Hiccup, even when the necessity for such simple routines had ceased to exist as anything but optional in Jack's world.  _One, two,_ he counter in unison with the rise and fall of Hiccup's chest.  _One, two...one, two...one, two..._

_"Why don't you just sleep up here?" Hiccup asked, peering over the side of the bed curiously at the crude makeshift mattress of pillows Jack had been hard at work on._

_"Because that's what grown-ups do," Jack rolled his eyes, seven years old and already as sarcastic and cynical as ever.  "Do I look old, stinky, and boring to you?"_

_Green, innocent eyes went wide with confusion, "Only grown-ups can share beds?" he asked, his face growing immediately cross, "Hey! Is that why we get the stupid small beds.."_

_Jack began to nod his head rapidly, "While they get those HUGE, awesome ones? Yeah, they keep all the good stuff."_

_Little Hiccup sat straight up and dramatically crossed his arms, landing back down on his bed with a  thump, "How rude!"_

_"Tell me about it," Jack's brown eyes rolled backward as he struggled to tie blankets together with his tongue sticking out thoughtfully from between his lips._

_"Whatcha doin' now?" Hiccup questioned in a sing-song voice, laying back on his belly and peering over the bedside towards his new friend who was tangled in a chain of blankets._

_"Security," Jack nodded, perfectly serious, "in case we need to escape later."_

_"Escape!?" Hiccup asked horrified. "Why would we want to do that?"_

_The brunette received the question with a blanket expression that couldn't understand what he'd just heard, "Why **wouldn't** we want to do that?" he asked with another eye roll. _

_"Because it's dangerous," the other replied innocently._

_"Danger is my middle name!" Jack proclaimed, holding his knotted blanket rope proudly above his head in all three feet of its completion._

_"Is not," the green eyed boy argued, "You told me it was awesome yesterday!"_

_A goofy grin spread across the other's childish features, "I have lots of names," he lied playfully, "all great adventurers do."_

_"You're too many things," Hiccup shook his head illogically, even from a young age, he'd been born slightly older than his worth in years. "I'm just me."_

_"Borrrinngggg," Jack stuck his finger towards the back of his throat. "You have to be **something** Hiccup, or else the grownups win!" he insisted. _

_"Why?"_

_"Duh, because they give us funny names and think that makes us theirs or something," he furrowed his eyebrows with all the self empowerment of any seven year old, "But I don't WANT to be a Jack," he shook his head disapprovingly, "They come in boxes and pots and lame stuff like that."_

_"Haha, jackpot," Hiccup laughed to himself, catching the nonsensical drift after a moment. "I don't know though, I think I like my name."_

_"Why?" Jack asked strangely, "Do you hiccup a lot or_ _something?"_

_"No!" The other boy pouted. "Because it was a present, my dad gave it to me."_

_"I guess," the other shrugged, "but I don't know my real dad, so I don't care."_

_Hiccup grew hushed in a bashful silence, reaching himself further over the side of the bed, "That's sad," he frowned._

_"Not really," Jack spoke unfazed, as if isolation were always somewhat of a normalcy._

_"We can share my dad if you want," the other piped happily, "he's big enough for both of us I think."_

_"Really?" Brown eyes lit up as bright green bounced off them hopefully, "You'd really do that?"_

_"Of course," he received a wide, tooth-missing grin, "Everybody belongs somewhere silly."_

_Jack reached out smiling, dragging Hiccup off the bed and onto the pillows in a disorganized gesture. "And now I belong with you," he held the other's hand tightly in a knot of small, sticky fingers._

_Hiccup returned the favor with a hug that overthrew both of their balance, landing together in a mess of blankets and laughter, "And you always will."_

_"Promise?"_

_"Promise."_

There was a saying about promises though, and Jack believed it went hand in hand with the word broken, but he hadn't the chance to elaborate before the body next to him lunged forward in a cold sweat. 

"Jack!" he yelled, both hands outstretched, eyes half lidded, not yet aware. _"Jack!"_ he shouted again, folding his fingers empty handed, trying to pull symmetry away from the nothingness, only to widen his irises and retract his hands sadly. "Jack?" Hiccup asked again softly, and almost inaudibly, staring down at the blank spaces of his palms as his best friend sat not even a foot away, staring awestruck at the blanket expression on his face. 

"I'm right here," Jack tried futilely, "I'm right here, it was a dream, just a dream," he reached out, hands hesitating every time they got too close, too heartbroken to stand the habitual rejection they'd receive if they went any further. 

"I thought..maybe it was really you this time," Hiccup breathed in and sighed deeply, running his hands through damp strands that stuck to his forehead, and instilling just the faintest inkling of hope in Jack's chest. "But you were never one for punctuality," his eyes drifted sadly towards the window and right through the body that lay invisibly at his side. 

The tears had come back like little icicles, falling only far enough before forming a sharp, transparent surface that was waiting to break at any moment. Hiccup was looking straight through him, and the thought alone was killing him so much more than usual. "But I'm here now," he pleaded in vain with the silence. 

Green eyes were overcast with conflicting emotion, flickering back and forth between angry and vacant as Hiccup kicked off all the covers and walked towards the window that was now completely encased in frost. Rubbing at the pane with the edge of his sleeve, he cleared away just enough space to press his forehead against the glass, staring longingly into the endless shades of midnight and starlight. "Why did you have to go," he asked softly. 

**●(¯`·._(_.·´¯`·._.»r«._.·´¯`·._)_.·´¯)●**  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading :) i'm going to try and pump out chapter five at least, but it seems going back through each chapter and retyping it in attempts to make minor alterations, corrections, etc takes way longer than I remember it, I'm gonna take a wild guess it's from being a few days shy of 24 now and realizing, I was already losing my sense of grammar while first writing this, and at this point in my life, I'm sadly not even sure you could call it knowledge, just me staring at commas and semi colon like "wtf, WHY DID YOU PUT THESE HERE!?


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eh, again, a little more plot developing than juicy tidbits, and also SO MUCH more repetitive little wording quirks than I remember scattered throughout, but I've been up for 48 hours and my brain hurts, so for the most part, I just let them continue on in all their redundantly irritating glory. ALSO, another reminder, I mentioned this earlier in author notes, about how I notoriously misuse the word 'several' and unfailingly drive readers crazy by doing it, but, just know that whenever its referencing eyes or arms or anything that clearly only has TWO, that I mean it as such. I know technically I'm stretching this exception of mine into the most unsound loophole, but since it means, two or more, I count it as correct enough, that and it just fits so well with my love of allegorical sentence structures. That, and, as I said before, I'm probably not going to stop any time soon. So muhhhh baddd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, this chapter is sort of more developmental, move the plot along, filler, and one of the chapters on the shorter side. Also, you'll notice the miscellaneously places poem in the middle-although applicable to the plot-it is, in fact, one of my own original works, and one of my more favored pieces. Although blindly saying this won't really do much, nor does posting it on the internet really cater to help my cause, NOR do I actually deem my work necessarily worth stealing, but I'm rather fond and protective of my writing, but my poetry especially, so for whatever reason, please do not steal it :)
> 
> ALSO; before I forget, even though this first one is about 2 years overdue: 
> 
> To "blitz_lili," thank you for your comment, as well as being the first, official person to take the time to leave me an actual, written review! Something, I know a lot of people don't always bother doing, but I wanted to say that I appreciate it a lot! Also, rawrrr, yes "years of experience," I'm glad you pointed out slash liked that line bahah because I loved it!
> 
> Next, to "~Anon," thank YOU for being my second ever comment on this fic, as well as probably one of the only people to have recently revisited it after abandoning it for several years b/c I merely forgot I'd started posting it. Aye-ye-ye. Anywho, I'm glad you think it's a good fic so far, I've really begun to lose confidence over the years in thinking I've lost my edge, so hopefully the rest continues to spike your curiosities. This current chapter is a little 'meh' in comparison to the next few. And I'm not gonna lie, the chapter I mentioned having been working on for multiple years, still may take a bit to finalize, just because I'm so lost within the inner workings of my own plot and am tweaking out about messing it up by posting an imperfect version. 
> 
> But yeah, ANYWAYS, thanks for the comments guys, and to everyone else who's left kudos thus far. I hope you enjoy this, semi-boring, but leading to better things chapter :D
> 
> I'll probably throw Chapter Six in as a freebee if I have the brain capacity leftover, since I'm a pushover like that, and despise leaving off on chapters that even I find subpar. So. ENJOY.
> 
> Shutting up now.

      *´¨)  
     ¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*¨)  
    (¸.•´ (¸.•` ¤  **Chapter Five**

"I was going after you," Jack replied sadly, lifting himself slowly off the bed. 

"And why did you never come back?" Hiccup continued, quietly to himself, pulling into his own embrace as his arms wrapped insecurely around his shoulders. 

A tear slipped slowly down Jack's cheek, "...because I died for you."

Labored breaths hit the window, fogging the glass and mixing with the frost. Emerald eyes were flickering faintly against the moonlight, and Hiccup's lips turned downward in a tremble. "All I wanted was for you to stay..." a small fist curled in a failed attempt, trying to transition out of the emotion and into the ignorance of anger. 

"And all I wanted was for you never to leave," he interjected. 

"...why couldn't you just _listen_ for once?"

The thought of Berk burning scourged in his chest, charring his stability, but emboldening his desire for diction and dynamic. Although technically one sided, Jack and Hiccup were so in sync that the interaction almost seemed real; but the unprovoked necessity to respond eventually rendered the exchange into stagnation, reminding Jack once more that this was make believe. 

Hiccup never said another word. 

It was funny how easily silence could break your heart—how easily it could catch every fading word and produce a painful echo in place of meaning. Like invisible rings in a ripple effect of reverberation, the atmosphere filled with the unspoken, stemming centripetally from the hole in Jack's chest.

He was curled up against the idea of Hiccup, huddled into the impressions of the bed. The other boy had finally gone back to sleep after what seemed like hours that'd he'd spent staring emptily out his window. Perhaps because it  _had_ been exactly three and a half hours that they'd sat in awkward, unexplainable synchronization, ignorance had buckled under temporary bliss though, and Jack couldn't find his feet when he'd tried to run. Instead, he'd held his ground and stayed with Hiccup the whole night, unable to bear the thought of abandoning him ever again.

Continuing to take in the sight of the red head sleeping, Jack wondered how something so beautiful had ever been his. How someone so good and so pure had ever loved someone like him in the first place. The whole thing hurt like hell, and the shaken teen had already exhausted himself, was this really how it was going to be?  _Is this really all we are now?_ his lips pulled downward.

The word 'forever' found its way back into Jack's thoughts and left him ever divided as he was reduced to a fraction of what this was costing him. It were as if his feelings had been set to a fixed payment plan, rationing an infeasible debt over the course of a lifetime. Hiccup had been the price he'd paid, but couldn't afford. Quickly liquidating his assets existentially and foreclosing on the future he'd gambled himself out of.

Jack sighed, forgetting how deep the hole he'd dug really was, and just how much debt he was in —debt to fate —debt to Hiccup —debt to himself. It was like he owed something to everyone, but found no currency that met the exchange. Unable to reestablish his credit as a friend, or even a human being, Jack was denied every transaction. 

_ The road to hell really is paved with good intentions, isn't it? _  He asked himself, internally torn by the truth that his attempt to save the thing he treasured most had somehow punished him in the process and left both of them incomplete. The reality that he'd robbed Hiccup blind, surreptitiously surrounding him long enough to shove the boy's body out of free fall right before stealing his whole world as he sank into the surreal, and became one with the seafloor.

_ I wish I'd just stayed that way. I wish I'd never woken back up _ —he could think of a hundred ways to say it, turning phrases that couldn't coin the consistency of closure. Hiccup murmured incoherently into his pillow, and Jack knew Stoick would be barging in any second to wake him. The sun had snuck up on them in the dead of night and begun pouring vibrant hues between deep shadowy spectrums, and it was once again time for Jack to return to where he belonged.

_ Nowhere. _

Straining himself all the way back to the small enclosure in the forest where he'd carved a world of winter, Jack's thoughts fell fixedly on the finality of his estrangement. There had to be someway to fix it. Reverse it. Cancel it out. There had to be  _something_ he could do,  _anything_ to bring the rush of his friend back into his fingertips instead of the fleeting feeling of going right through him. 

_ You win, old man, _  Jack thought, giving into fate, attempting the first of many tries to solve the riddle his life had been reduced to; and completely unaware how intangibly it was interweaving through his psyche. 

Gripping his staff as delicately as if it were an instrument, Jack's left hand slid down a few feet before the middle and pressed his thumb and pointer finger into the smooth, worn way indents. Then, with a steady grip, his right hand traced the woodwork along the curvature, and all five fingers wrapped around the circumference with a fraction of space between each. Sighing, still nervously awaiting the haunting melody that was a fraction of a second from forming, Jack drew in a calm, cold breath and held the ice in his lungs for as long as he could before closing his eyes.

Breathing steadily, in and out, he systematically shut down the centers of his brain one by one, allowing them to slip into a false sense of security as his mood melted into soft snowfall. A steady pulsing began to splinter beneath the bark, and the creases and crevices overflowed with crackling frost, filling out the rivets and completing its shape. Bracing himself fearlessly, but very much afraid, Jack willed his mind to bend quietly out of focus, allowing the pulsation to radiate into his wrists and down his arms.

Shaking his whole frame and morphing in and out of his skeletal structure, staff and boy became one as fractured shards of light began to burn through frostbitten fingertips, cascading down the crystalized encasing and melting into intricate swoops and swirls. As steady as his heart, which was hardly beating, the script began to form legibly in small, delicate print; but Jack knew it wasn't over yet.

His staff was like his lifeline in a lot of ways, and his connection to it was far stronger than a simple flash of lights; instead, Jack clenched his heart muscles together as frequencies of blue and ultraviolet began to burn in their chambers. Folding inwardly against the pressure of his abdomen fighting to hold the force, his entire body slowly turned into brilliant blown glass, standing as motionless as an ice sculpture while an icy, hot whisper thawed his auditory canals with sharp wit that shrouded double meaning in a barrage of black ice that Jack could avoid no more clearly than he could see.

Slowly, so excruciatingly slow, each word began to illuminate in a deeper shade of blue as the narration echoed endlessly around him in never ending rhythm. And Jack tried, for the first time to really  _listen._

__ _ _x.-*-.X.-*-x_ _ __

_Unable to protect, from shallow depths_

_A heart rose up, and fell in farewell_

_To the currents and collisions, of_ _the body who relives them_  

_Crash landing in a forecasting, of dizzy spells, made for a bad day in hell_  


_As the seafloor spit cerulean and the sea foam starts to swell_

_With spinning clouds, and crashing waves, s_ _plintering shipwrecks into graves_

_Sinking the secrets, withheld from the truth_

_Half captain for witness, half skeleton for proof_

_Going down with the ship, riding an excuse_

_Desperate to detonate, but can't find the fuse_

_An escapable demise, sometimes it's cruel to be kind_

_Pumping saltwater up, through cracks in the spine_

_Like vertebras on a string, they detach and unwind_

_Like bars on a cage, grown in ruins, built with age_

_There was nothing to protect, and nothing to save._

_So swallow salt, the endless burning_

_That cleans the cuts of deeper learning_

_Then out of seaweed, grow the scars_

_Of disjoining skylines and fading stars_

_Sights on strings, attached to eyes_

_The body's tied down, but the oxygen must rise_

_Up to the surface, and out with a gasp_

_Dead hands reach, but cannot grasp_

_Fingers slip, break, and crash_

_Against an undertow that runs too fast_

_Dangerously off pace, with no chambers to chase_

_A heart continues drowning, in search of a face._

__ _ _X.-*-.x.-*-.X_ _ __

The intonation faded suddenly and the rest stood still, all but imprinting him in the moment. It was only midday, but darkness was surrounding him like a veil, concealing shameful features that failed to understand. Losing sight resultantly, Jack's eyes saw through a filter, black and gauzy and obstructing the obstacles he otherwise tripped over. Navigating through the poetic versus was like being blind to verbal expression, unable to attribute any deeper meaning to the words that seemed so familiar on the surface, but became lost in the lulling of a rhyme scheme. 

Slowly, but surely, however, the pre-position rendered paralysis, and Jack's joints became flexible beneath the softening currents. Flinching at first, his fingers began to twitch like a nervous tick, and then one by one they became mobile as motor skills were instinctively re-instilled.  Prying the digits from the staff they'd frozen to, Jack felt both a sense a relief and discomfort towards the disconnection. On one hand, it was overwhelmingly alleviating to regain a sense of independence; but on the other, it felt strange and somehow unnatural to exist separately. 

Staggering backwards in an unfamiliar reaction to control, Jack forgot to take it, and collapsed helplessly before he could find his feet. He was exhausted,  mentally and physically, remembering quite clearly why this process had never been routine. Jack sighed, struggling to regain a steady flow of oxygen, but found his lungs refusing the familiarly. 

"Satisfied?" he breathed laboredly. 

The wind blew and the trees swayed, but Father Time did not answer. 

Instead a myriad of miraculous molecular structures shook atop trembling tree limbs and sprinkled down over him in a delicate dance. "Well at least have the decency to say  _something_ ," he continued, feeling helpless and inadequate and too worn down to face any further rejection, but the sky was still and the earth was silent. Jack was to receive no more than a blanket of snow to bury himself in. 

_ "It's called interpretation," Hiccup rolled his eyes. _

_ "It's called say-what-you-mean," Jack argued.  _

_ "Because we both know how well you do  **that** ," several eyes shifted sarcastically. _

_ "Look who's talking." _

_ Hiccup didn't rise to the bait. "At least I'm  **trying**." _

_ "And maybe I'm sick of trying," the other boy responded stubbornly.  _

_ "Sick?" Hiccup challenged, closing the space, "Or scared?" _

_ Terrified, _ Jack answered, sighing away the still frames that had turned up to taunt him. Groaning unhappily, he turned away from everything, abandoning his quest to break through the barricade, too weak to do it all on his own. Shaking ever so slightly, his foot smacked the ground three times fast, and he waited patiently for a source of balance to emerge. 

"Jack?" a soft crunching noise grew closer as Bunny assessed the scenery, confused and concerned. 

Aquamarine irises traced a soft symmetry and then spoke inaudibly against it. "I want to see him Aster..."

The statement required no further elaboration, and the other caught the meaning without effort. "You mean ya want  _him_ ta see  _you_ ," the Australian corrected, not unkindly. 

Jack's features fell. "Why..." he paused. "Why can't he?"

It must've been the wrong question though, because Bunny seemed to pull away from it with no immediate response. The corners of the boy's eyes began to water, understanding this answer was about to rip right through him. 

"Because he doesn't believe, mate." Aster spoke softly, trying to find the right words when he knew they didn't exist. 

"In what?"

Bunny's nose wrinkled with the twist of a wince, retracting slightly as he spoke, "...in you."

Shattering into a million pieces, Jack wasn't even sure how his heart could possibly break anymore. "How do I...how do I make him... _believe_ , I mean."

Warm green eyes encased him gently, continuously softening against the unbearable pain of innocence. "Try believin' in  _yourself_ ," Aster paused. "Or else how do you expect anyone else to?"

"I wouldn't believe in me either," Jack sighed dejectedly. 

"Don't say that," Bunny snapped. "Don't you ever say that."

Staring sideways sheepishly, the youth was sinking into self-deprecating stillness. "Would you rather that I lie?" Jack asked emotionlessly. 

"That's enough Jack," rough pads encased in a surrounding of thick grey and white fur smacked against the right side of the boy's face.

Retracing from the collision, several shaken hands rose to the space, holding the pulsating imprint against the palm of his hand as his eyes framed the shock. Tiny teardrops glistened along the brim of his eyelids, an involuntary reaction that caused Aster to glance uneasily at his open paw. Jack's tone, however, offset any sentiment with hostility. 

"What the hell was  _that_ for?" he demanded.

"To slap some sense into ya," the elder reprimanded. "I swear sometimes you need a good smack in the head just to remind you that this is real."

The wording, although ordinary, hit Jack hard, and sank into his stomach where it slowly dissolved. "Well it's hard to be realistic when all we do is play pretend," he referenced his guardianship with detest. "What's real about flying around with a magic staff and making winter come to life?" Jack demanded. "Am I Frosty the  _fucking_ Snowman?" eyes narrowed spitefully, "tell me what part of that sounds  _real_ , Aster."

"You." The answer came simply, expressed in the most unthinking seriousness that threw the boy off balance. " _You're_ real."

"But, I'm not..."

Bunny cut him off, "Not made up, not a ghost, not a pile of snow," he overemphasized on purpose. "You're a person, Jack, not a corpse."

Eyebrows furrowed at the words, eyes squinting simultaneously for some way around them, but Jack fell into a whisper when any retort rotted away, "But, I'm dead."

"No, you  _died_ ," Aster rested his paws on either side of Jack's shoulders, forcing eye contact, "but you're not  _dead_. There's a difference."

Jack had never thought about it that way before, and there was too much truth in the way the tenses compared and contrasted so perfectly. His shoulders slumped under the subtle pressure of the other's hands weighing down upon him with hope and reason, eyes as wide as Easter eggs that were trying to recolor his own. 

Sighing, the paws repositioned anatomically, and a sad expression encased the youth thoughtfully. "You don't have to say anything if ya don't want to," he spoke calmly, and so much like the fatherly figurehead the boy so desperately needed. "Just think about it, okay, Jack?"

His head slipped into a forward motion, nodding, but never fully grasping any situational awareness as their second visit wound down even more thought provokingly than the first. It had been less emotional, but somehow more sincere, hitting Jack in all the right places to trigger the inevitability of relapsing back into it long after it was over. 

The difference between death and deceased seemed absent enough at the time, that is until Bunnymund had taken it deep into the depths of his warren, wrapping such delicate inconsistencies through ought them. Hope was always applicable, it was everything Aster stood for, and nothing that came naturally to Jack, thus interposing in such brilliant opposition that it created a sense of balance.

_ Balance is _ _good_ , Jack allowed himself to admit; balance was everything when you were tiptoeing along hell's boundaries—when one false step could mean life or death. Although Father Time was far from the devil,  _literally at least_ , blue eyes rolled back, his domain encompassed all elements of time and space—every dimension that being and perception could contort into. 

It felt like a page straight from  _Paradise Lost,_ and Jack was constantly changing shape and switching forms within the snowfall that rendered him so helplessly to the weight of dirt and debris, whose particles caused the cracks in his consistencies to form. He'd fallen from grace and into demonic form, chained to the bottom of a lake, surrounded by fire and endless burning. From which he'd somehow set himself free, only to find that despair followed in his footsteps, flooding into the freefall of factual inaccuracies that forged the borderline between damnation and deliverance. 

_ Water weighs, while matter sinks. Displace the value_ — _the missing link._

_That floats above, in drifting shards_ — _but cannot freeze a house of cards._

It struck him suddenly, softly, and with total surprise as the separate stanzas merged into sentence form, and Jack could read them as easy as left to right. Squinting in and out of focus, this time Jack found the unchanging atmosphere offsetting as an internal understanding began to bridge him back into himself, slowly but surely shifting how the world looked through his eyes. Striking  him simply, soundly, and silently how intangible understanding could be, how inferior his feelings were towards the reality of progression; but it surfaced, somewhere within him, that the water was the pressure that had forced the oxygen from his lungs. Deflating the buoyancy of his body, which sank downward, until the balance of his fate had relocated within a watery grave that froze and fractured into a glass ceiling. 

He had broken through though, and the glass had shattered as many times over as his heart, and since it sure as hell wasn't going to stop breaking any time soon, he may as well accept that there was no way to freeze time from forcing his walls to fall beneath the shifting sands of such an unstable foundation. The navigation key for the code  to the riddle clearly indicated something was  _missing_ —the link in the chain that made it a straight line instead of circular — _he_ was missing —from the world —to his friend —to himself.

Instantly thinking of Aster, the angle in Jack's frown rose obtusely until it had gone more than one hundred and eighty degrees upward into a stunning grin. Emitting all the confidence of the Jack he must set off in search to find. To  _be_ found —it was so simple that it was obvious, and so crazy that it might just work.  _I can't believe I never thought of it before,_ he shook his head,  _maybe Bunny was onto something, after all._ Jack mused, coining,  _Smack-the-Jack_ , as the new and improved whack-o-mole.  _Smack-the-Jack to get back on track,_ he grinned to himself, rising to the challenge —the rare occasion to be real again. 

What better way to find himself than to seek out the one person who knew him best? And what better way to be found, than by staging a hunt?     

                                                                                                                                 *´¨)  
                                                                                                                                ¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*¨)  
                                                                                                                               (¸.•´ (¸.•` ¤ _ **TBC'nd**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Six may or may not be up within the day, if not, sooner than later I'm sure, and as always, you know the drill, comments, kudos, or what not are welcome, appreciated, and one of the happier parts of my day :)


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apparently this was originally bordering on like 23 pages, even though they always seem so short typed up on here, and that was my original reasoning for splitting it into two separate one's, seeing as how I've stuck to shorter chapters on this fic so far. ANYWAYS, basically, the premise for the next three chapters is each of them are based on a specific memory, or what not. Which will make more sense once you've read the chapter. **Also, a little tidbit to keep in mind, the flashback towards the end is actually a continuation slash the second half of the flashback in the very first chapter**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo, well it's muhh birthday today, so I felt like updating...? Haha also The Epiphany, for those religious folk, and Topsy Turvy day for my Hunchback of Notre Dame fans!
> 
> Again, to Anon~ aka probably the only person actually reading this, for which I thank you again, as well as continue to extend my thanks for your having continuously commented on chapters :) I really do enjoy receiving and or leaving a good review, and appreciate the time taken from, not only reading my story, but also in recapping the experience :) And, oh, yes, I was originally an English major, although with horrid grammar, and have always had a knack for writing, and so fullblown plot lines are a kind of forte of mine, and I just cannot seem to wrap my head around writing without one. Hooowwwever, its kind of a catch-22, because without one I can't write, but WITH one, I've also sputtered into a standstill of writer's block, trying to get it all to match the pre planned plot. Aye. I'm glad to have caught a bite though, because, I admit, the hook was heavily baited, hoping to draw in people who, like myself, enjoy the unraveling of a multifaceted storyline. 
> 
> Also, yes, you pretty much hit the nail on the head with the coherency and stream of consciousness mirroring Jack's fluctuating mental states--well, in part on purpose, and partially due to my own inconsistent bipolar bouts, which are uncontrollable, but seem to end up complimenting the writing. At least I hope?
> 
> Anyways, thanks again, and I too hope the writer's block clears up soon, it's the absolute worst feeling as a writer XD
> 
> anddd here's the chapter

✲´*。.❄¨¯`*✲| **Chapter Six|** ✲*`¯¨❄.。*´✲

Hiccup stared undecidedly at the frozen pane of glass. It seemed to retain resilience against the heat that had melted all the others into transparencies. There was something different about this one though, something obtrusively inconspicuous that he could not put into words, not matter how visibly it stood out. Scratching the surface, a slender shaving curled beneath his fingernail as it fell away, and Hiccup flinched when it reformed. 

" _...Toothless..."_  he called nervously, straining his eyes sideways because he was afraid of what might happen if he turned away from it.

There was a deep rumbling and a grunt as the dragon uncurled and stretched, slinking over to inspect the commotion. 

"Get...get rid of it," Hiccup commanded, although it sounded more like hesitation, causing Toothless to raise one eye higher than the other. 

The redhead tapped his foot impatiently, "Just  _do_ it, okay!" several hand repositioned and his ears were met with the low, deep rumbling inside the beast's breast as Toothless conjured a cautious mist of fire. 

Across the room, not daring to get any closer, Jack leaned against his staff, watching fire form in sparks like little smoldering snowflakes, licking at the solid layer of ice.  _It's beautiful,_  Jack remarked,  _but not quite as strong as what I'm made of,_ he grinned, watching the look that crawled up Hiccup's skin when the glass refused to weep.

Stepping back, then inching forward, then hesitating once more, the boy arched frontward, defensively towards the window as if he expected something to jump right out of it. He couldn't help it though, it was instinctual. 

This was unexplainable—abnormal—unnatural. 

"It's n-not logically posib-ble," he shook his head, unable to compute, his eyes opening in awe of the crystallization that was causing cracks to echo. It was such a distinct sound. This terrible sort of noise that caused Hiccup to jump back whenever the pressure spread through the windowpane and then pushed back with a deep, sudden  _POP._

It felt as if the whole symmetry should shatter every time, as if Hiccup getting any closer would cause the whole illusion to collapse. Flinching, scattered vibrancies of green seemed to refocus sadly, encasing the phenomenon in its simplest form:  _frost._

His expression pulled into his cheek and sea green eyes shot towards the floor, like doing so would make him forget. As if something so simple could possibly remove something so impressionable from his consciousness. However, neither man nor beast were unaware of the painful irony manifesting, and Hiccup delicately traced a "J" into the hissing, crackling sheet.

Immediately, the dragon began to prod his feet excitedly, nudging Hiccup gently, and eyeing the initial.

"Yeah, I know," he sighed, patting the top of Toothless's head dejectedly, "I miss him too, bud."

For half a second, Jack's heart skipped a beat and allowed the unchanging consistency to begin melting down slowly, some in rainfall and others in snow, steadily revealing the ulterior motive behind the arctic casting. He had left three items fastened in-between the multiple layers of magic ice, each as equally vague as the other, but also unique and specific at the same time— _personal._

_Only you'll understand,_ he glanced at his friend, whose adam’s apple was bobbing nervously as one foot fell in front of the other.  _Please, Hiccup,_ Jack pleaded, begging the boy's feet to keep going forward,  _you have to_ ** _understand_** _...you have to go_ ** _back_** _..._

Sparkling against the backdrop of light that fought to get through the obstruction of fixed frost, the mass of ice began to give way more rapidly at Jack's command, melting only around the first object as its outlines began to protrude and emerge through the clear, milky currents that ran down the windowsill and pooled on the floor. 

Hiccup's entire body drained like an old cartoon, color vanishing from the head down in a heartbeat, until the pigmentation in his skin went as white as Jack's, shaking noticeably as both hands reached out. First one step, then another, and finally the tips of the redhead's fingers slid through the melting mass, just enough to get a gentle grip around the thick, rounded, diamond shape resting in his palms. 

Retracting from the surreal sensation of ice that had not been cold, Hiccup pulled the token straight to his chest, staring at it in complete disbelief. It was a deep, iridescent, obsidian scale no bigger than a fist. It was a dragon scale. 

"How did this get here?" Hiccup demanded aloud, eyes beginning to burn beneath the dampening rims of his lids as he willed the tears not to fall. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"

Jack flinched, his eyes widening at the discomfort he knew he had to cause if he ever wanted Hiccup to believe in him—to rediscover him. And the winter reincarnate could think of no better place to start than the one he lost him to. However, Jack was powerless to force the memories upon him, Tooth had made that perfectly clear when he'd gone, begging her for this one, very special favor. 

You see, the premise behind Jack's plan had been simple—crazy, but simple—it was a journey—it was an excavation—it was a  _hunt_ _;_ and the blue-eyed boy advocated that instead of eggs and candy, Hiccup would be hunting down his own memories. 

That's where Tooth came in. Jack had been at a standstill with his own keepsakes of thought and time, but if he could push Hiccup and his into full motion, then the inevitability of inertia would cause them to collide. Once the course of motion had been set, it could not be stopped. And Jack wanted his friend to hit him in a head on collision; he wanted to feel the  _slam_  of his heart resuscitating; he wanted to feel the impact of Hiccup's body hit him at full force—he wanted all of it. 

There was a catch though— _isn't there always?_  Jack asked in a sarcastic echo.  _Seriously, if the best things in life are in fact free, then...what exactly_ ** _are_** _the best things in life supposed to be?_  he considered, then snapped his fingers even more sardonically.  _Oh right, there aren't any, because the world is an_ ** _asshole_** _,_ Jack grumbled under his breath,  _and even death comes with a sale's tax. _

He had hoped this facet of his plan would fall into place more smoothly, however Tooth reminded him of the rules and regulations Jack had once again seemed to overlook. See, when he had flown into the heavens of the free floating palace, awed by the radiating, iridescent light of golden inlay bouncing brilliantly against reflections of the intricate lavender and cherry blossom stained glass, he'd hoped the Guardian of  _Memories_ would have been a little more understanding. 

However, Tooth had simply hummed around nervously, fluttering from one diagonal to another, shouting orders and talking to Jack over her shoulder whenever she could spare the glance. 

Originally, his request had been to Hiccup's memories, however, that request had been denied, and not even Jack's stunning smile could coax her _or_ Baby Tooth into letting him borrow them... _just for a little while I told them,_ he thought back,  _I would've brought them back when I was done._ Although Tooth was buzzing about, insisting it did not matter and was completely besides the point—reversing the situation and demanding how _Jack_ would like it if she gave  _his_  memories away to anyone who asked.

_"But I'm not just_ ** _anyone_** _," he argued systematically, "I'm Jack Frost. I'm a Guardian," he tried next, eager to impress her with at least one of his spur of the second reasons, too manic to back down from this idea. He sighed in agitatedly, and released the next four words with much and more emphasis, "I'm his_ ** _best friend_ ** _."_

_Prismatic purple eyes widened and dropped in the corners as the constant beating of wings rippled and faded into a steady hover. "Jack, I know this hard for you to understand, but there are rules. And it's my job to ensure that no one may ever use another's memories against them."_

_"But I'm trying to_ ** _help_ **_him!" Jack shouted, unable to maintain diplomatic composure under the pressure of emotions that were hell-bent on finding a way out of this one-size-fits-all catastrophe that had molded itself to his body like a mannequin. "He's_ ** _miserable_ ** _, Tooth!" the forcefulness in his intonation began to fade slightly under the delicate intricacies of just how important this was. "So, tell me, what it is I'm asking that's_ ** _so_ **_horrible that you'd rather let him suffer."_

_Swooping backward, levitating slightly higher in the air as she elevated and descended in a nervous pattern of sputtering wings and compassionate corneas that encased Jack thoughtfully, Tooth was looking at him the way all the Guardian's did when they developed the inability to deny the boy their assistance that he was so desperately in need of._

_"Jack, please," she reached out to him in a sweet, lulling voice that was almost maternal, "you know that I can't break my oath, but please don't think that means I wish any suffering on anyone..." she paused, sucking in a breath and hesitating over the potential hazards this could have. "Tell me what it is you need though...and I'll see what I can do."_

_"I just need..." Jack searched through the word bank in his head to find the right one to fill in the blank. "I just need proof," blue eyes grew big and rounded like a puppy. "I just need him to remember me as I was...I..." his voice was beginning to catch and falter, rolling the last words off his tongue in a barely audible rhythm, "I need to give him a reason to believe in me again."_

_Closing her eyes, ascending rapidly to a large crystal chamber through the ring of peach and amethyst clouds, Tooth vanished from Jack's line of vision. His eyes darting through the shadowy barrier and ears perking up for the slightest sound of wings._

_After what seemed like an eternity, or more, Tooth returned with a slender container in her hands that Jack recognized all too well; and he knew they were Hiccup's, even if the picture on the side looked more like a chipmunk instead of a boy, however, as Jack extended his hand to take the case, Tooth veered into the clear, shaking her head 'no'._

_"You may have three memories," she announced, cradling the teeth in her arms as if they were as precious as a new born babe, "Any three you want, it doesn't matter."_

_"Any three?" Jack asked, already trying to wrap his head around a lifetime and reduce it into a list._ ** _There's that damn number again_** _, he thought restlessly, although it gave Jack the cleverest of ideas, drawing back on the 'deeper meaning of three' with a smirk on his face: Creation, **Destruction** , and _Preservation _, the perfect recipe._

_"Any three," her head bobbed in confirmation. "But I must warn you, Jack, this won't work as well as you're going to want it to, there's a_ **_big_ ** _catch when using extracted memory," her higher pitch was muddled between forewarning and the slender, jet black vial between her fingers as she watched it hesitatingly. "You will have no control over when the memory triggers, or which segment, or scene will come to their mind. Memory is not simply_ **_in_  ** _the mind Jack, it is an essence of your being," Tooth drifted downward in a 'z' shape, sighing to herself as she continued..._

_"Aside from the preservation in our primary teeth, memory is nothing you can touch, Jack, it isn't located_ **_anywhere_ ** _," she explained calmly. "You must be prepared for what else you may provoke in the process, intentional or otherwise. All frames of mind will become subject to apply as soon as you take this, but you cannot leave any written or explicit directions. No arrows, no pathways, no secret codes," she squinted at him with a skeptical eye, knowing his way around everything was impeccable. "Instead, you must find something solid, something linked directly to that which you wish them to seek, and then you must help them recreate the moment in order for them to remember it..."_

_The list went on...and... **on**...and...on..._

_Jack's pinkie finger was in his ear, twisting from side to side as if to clear the clutter and confusion of the instructions. "Jesus, that's a lot of rules." His eyes seemed to begin spiraling in circles. "Do I really have to follow every, last, itty, bitty, teeny, tiny, one?"_

_He was bearing a toothy, childlike grin, but the fairy merely gave him a gentle smile, "It depends how badly you want your friend back..."_

The question had practically been blasphemous, but Jack hadn't a single bone in his body that was mean enough to lash out and follow through with it. Instead, he'd taken the vial, had the instructions all repeated, and then blubbered like a baby, thanking Tooth left and right as he took flight.

Over five hours had passed between that time and now though, and Jack had long since taken the steps to grind the memory molds into fine powder. Combining it with snow and several locks of hair, both and Hiccup's his own (which had taken him quite awhile to acquire, might he add) before stirring the concoction into a thick, milky residue. After allowing the liquid to set, the mixture congealed and completely solidified into the shape of a tooth, which he'd been saving up until now.

Sighing deeply, Jack slipped his hand into his back pocket to retrieve the sealed glass test tube, hearing the almost inaudible  _clank-clank_  of the canine capsule shifting about aimlessly inside. Undoing the cork with his teeth, spitting it somewhere off to the side, unnoticed, his lips repositioned around the rim of the slender container and tipped it all the way back until he felt something small and cold hit the back of his throat. Inhaling through his nose, as not to choke, Jack steadied his gag reflex and then allowed his muscles to force the unusual shape through his esophagus and into his stomach where it may dissolve. 

According to the Tooth Fairy, the combination should allow the memories to exist within Jack's subconscious; and although he would have no direct access to them, he  _would_  experience them vicariously, as well as interpose them once their owner had drawn them out. She had tried her hardest to advise against this particular methodology, but Jack wasn't having Hiccup relive anything that he wasn't going to relive too.  _We have to do this_ ** _together_** _._

Concentrating once more on the distraught mess of arms and legs pacing around the room, Jack refocused his efforts towards his friend, who was staring down the scale as if he'd seen a ghost. As if he suddenly recognized it. Rubbing it between his hands, the white haired boy watched Hiccup's palms slide smoothly around its surface, caressing it delicately as if to warm an old friend from the cold. Then, sighing in deeply, Jack braced himself for Hiccup to establish the connection between one of the three memories he'd stolen.  _Starting with 'destruction,'_  Jack watched closely, holding every fallen feature in his heart so he could remember them all when he was finally able to apologize to Hiccup's face for making him relive the disfiguration. 

"Do you recognize this, buddy?" Hiccup held out the scale for Toothless to flare his nostrils at, taking in the scent. "It's one of yours," he continued, clearly half mad with the idea that the scale his best-friend had taken with him to the grave had somehow appeared imbedded in a box of ice, frozen to the inside of his window. "It's the one Ja-," his lips froze, hesitating openly before closing, unable to even bear saying the name as the cogs in his mind fell flawlessly in sync, and it all came back to him for the first time.

Hiccup hesitated towards the dragon with the scale trembling in his grasp. Holding it out in front of him blindly as if this were pin the tail on the donkey, but emerald eyed forced themselves from closing. Shallowly, his heart was pounding as he aligned the scale with the deep notch in the dragon's back, the empty space where one had been missing for years. 

There was a smooth sound of surface against surface, and Hiccup dropped it immediately when it was a perfect fit. His hand rising suddenly to cover his mouth as the name, " _Jack..."_  escaped in a rushed, frantic spurt of air. Like it'd taken every centimeter of his lung span just to produce such a heavy sound. 

In that moment, Jack wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around the traumatized teenager and pull him into his chest, never letting go for the rest of their lives; but instead, he felt a sharp jolt in his ribs that popped his chest forward painfully.  _Oh my god._ Jack cringed inwardly in aguish, doubling over, clenching the space on his breast where his heart was. Across the room, Hiccup's motions seemed to mirror his friends, unknowingly now connected through mind and body as the potion Jack brewed made this both direct and vicarious. 

Swelling in his solar plexus like a surge of storms tearing through the sea, Jack could feel his stomach rock unsteadily while the sands overturned the scale, deep within his subconscious, spitting it back out in a brilliant flash of blue that sucked them both beneath an undertow of long-since revisited remembrances. 

_Hiccup was caught between a bursting clash of cobalt currents charged with electricity, and Jack was grinding his heals into the back of his dragon as hard as he could to make it go faster. The legendary beast was even more colossal in the sky, swallowing the horizon in a tattered expansion of bone like wings, all jaunty and dilapidated. Another eruption of electricity shot past him, barely missing Jack by the skin of his nose as it zoomed past and dematerialized into the night. Followed by its brothers and sisters as they cascaded through the sky in every conceivable direction, creating chaos in their wake._

_Holding his breath deep in his lungs, he was trying just as hard as Hiccup to even breathe as the hurricane force winds spun the clouds into a mixture of smoke and burning; fracturing bright shards of crimson and cerulean throughout the sky that fell against the reflection of the tide like fading fireworks. Brown eyes were wide with fear and terror all at the same time as he searched the endless, intertwining wisps of death and darkness for even the slightest symmetry of Toothless shifting throughout them; when suddenly, there was a scolding puff of steam encasing him from the back, and Jack turned around to the sound of screaming._

_"Hiccup!" he yelled back, his vocals tearing through the smog and choking against the simple effort to inhale as he was blinded by a volcanic eruption that began furiously framing the wingspan surrounding them like a ring of fire._

_"Jack!" he heard back. At least he thought he did, some sort of muffled sound that resembled his name, but when Jack veered his dragon jerkily from left to right, upward and downward, he saw nothing. Not until an uncontrollable burst of wind began to pull him and the rest of the sky downward, falling towards their deaths._

_Beating, thumping, skipping, and palpitating, Jack had never felt so small or so alarmed in his entire life; and yet, Hiccup was the only thing he could think of, attempting the descent with his dragon headfirst in hyper speed._

_"Jack!"_

_His head jerked in every direction, attempting to pinpoint where the echo had ricochet off of, but this time the cry was real_ _—_ _the pain in the voice was real_ _—_ _the whole world was burning now, and Hiccup was going down with it. Finally securing the sight of Toothless spiraling tail-lessly, Jack's brown eyes became larger and began filling with tears from his heart and the suffocating atmosphere both. Trying to track the image of Hiccup corkscrewing almost lifelessly,_ _his body curled into his dragon, only held in place by a frayed stretch of rope that secured to his vest._

_"Hiccup, hold on!" he screamed, following and following, digging his heals into the dragon so hard that Jack could hardly see, searching and searching for the body still  falling in and out of focus. So focused on everything else. So focused. Going so fast. That._ ** _WHACK._** _Something large, leathery, and smoldering smacked him from behind. As simple, sound, and sudden as a knife driving through his back and then Jack felt his body slip from anything stable, plummeting into petrifying free fall._  

_Fluttering his eyelashes, Jack squinted around at the sights and sounds that zoomed in and out of focus so fast that he was certain he was already dead. That is until he had caught sight of Hiccup somewhere below, slipping slowly from his restraint and hovering above the mass of the dragon that fell even faster beneath him. With his heart in his throat, and his stomach falling through his body, Jack's pulse shot off in an alarming acceleration. Pounding against his chest so hard that he thought it might be the sound of drums on the island, signaling for search parties._

_"Hiccup!" he shouted, but his voice was cut off by the cruel, hundred an hour mile vortex of wind whipping past him that stole his voice. Panicking to the point of total clarity, Jack hardly had enough time to think; but he saw the ground beneath them approaching, and Hiccup was heading straight for high water. Closing his eyes, almost without any thought at all, the brown haired boy fell forward into a dive, increasing his speed as his hands cut through the resistance._

_Staring upward from the back and forth rotation of motion and gravity ripping his body in directionless jolts, several emerald eyes were staring up hopelessly, trying so hard to embrace his eminent death, but unable to quell the faith in that voice he'd heard. In that brilliant, beautiful sound he'd caught crashing through the chaos so clearly. That instant where the world had gone quiet and time had stopped and he'd launched his attack into the belly of the beast without fear. In spite of the reality, the sound was always fading, resurfacing, and then resonating, but Hiccup had not seen a face...and now he was falling, falling ever so fast...and the only thing he found himself wishing...was that he didn't have to die alone._

_Forming profusely, every ounce of tears was ripped savagely away from his overcast, emerald eyes. Never steadfast as the wind tore them upward and scattered the salty solution in droplets that quickly fell out of form. There was no stopping them though, because he swore he could hear Jack calling, and he wanted so badly just to see his face one last time. But the air pressure was fading and pressing down on his lungs, losing the ability to breathe in the drastic drops._

_Fluttering open and closed, Jack watched Hiccup's consciousness fading, and tried anything he could do to fall faster. Angling himself every which way, even trying to flap both arms frantically as if he had wings. "Hiccup, I'm right here!" The sound sputtered and died out through the distance, but the brunette couldn't stop swimming, closer and closer, until the body freefalling soundlessly collided with the brush of his fingertips._

  _Flexing and curling tightly around the air, Jack couldn't find anything to grasp onto, but he could see the ground approaching at record speed. All but giving up, when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Toothless_ _—twisting and fighting furiously to fly on his own, back to his master; straining to extend his wings, but falling short_   _—which was the moment something sank in Jack's chest, and he realized he was never coming home._

  _Pushing forward so peacefully, yet so terrified, he put his every last ounce of strength into grabbing at Hiccup's vest; this time enough to pull the boy's body into his own. He tried to hold them back, but the salty serum still formed and fell upward into the sky as Jack wrapped his arms around Hiccup so tightly that, for a moment, he thought they would die like that together. But then there was a weak movement against his chest where the other boy's head had been tucked beneath Jack's chin protectively. Several skinny hands fought to the front of the brunette's shirt, digging into the fabric as if he had claws instead of fingers, staring at his face with such wide-eyed horror. "I told you not to come," his voice trembled, still shaking against the other._

_"I know," Jack tried to yell, taking another glimpse below, realizing there was no time. "But this time it's you who can't come with me," his lips broke into a wobbly smile that couldn't suppress the tears._

_The fists around his shirt clenched even more tightly. "What are you talking about, Jack, don't let me go," he resisted frantically when the taller boy began to pry Hiccup's fingers from his chest, holding them in his own tightly._

_Jack cracked a smile, and all he managed was, "I'll miss you," in between tears before thrusting the other boy forward, who reached out in vain._

_"No!" Hiccup was hysterical, screaming and fighting off Toothless's attempts to protect and shelter him from the crash. All the boy could do was shout, "Jack!" at the top of his lungs and pound his fists against Toothless. Sobbing and begging to please,_ ** _please_ ** _save his friend._

_Grunting in distress, the dragon surveyed the area long enough to catch the silhouette of Jack slipping through the clouds and got just close enough that Hiccup reached out and caught his arm. Although the impact nearly knocked them both back into the air, the small, skinny teen was using everything he had left to pull Jack's body to safety. He had one hand clenched around one of the dragon's scales, his heart filling with hope for half a second until he felt himself slipping. And Jack knew once and for all he was a dead man._

_With one hand around his friend, for what would be the end of their forever, Jack removed his hand from Hiccup's first, despite the other's resistance. "Jack," he shouted, screamed, and even cried hysterically. "Please, what are you_ ** _doing_ ** _!?"_

_But the extra weight was veering them all of course, and Jack knew he was tipping the balance. With another tear in his eye, his lips quivered uncontrollably as he pressed a kiss into his fingertips, gently covering Hiccup's mouth. "You stay," his voice cracked, quoting one of their favorite movies, choking on the tears. "I go," Jack stretched outward, taking back his hand from Hiccup's face that failed to grasp anything but pain and silence. "No following," Jack shook his head, his intonation catching and shuddering as he felt the scale begin to slip out of place._

_The last thing he saw was the fading, fleeting blink of green before his body smacked the surface and broke the waves, watching air bubbles rise as he continued to sink. At the same time, his friend fought and clawed against his dragon, who wrapped him securely in his wingspan, bracing Hiccup for the fall from the sky that he wouldn't remember._

✲´*。.❄¨¯`*✲| **To Be Continued|** ✲*`¯¨❄.。*´✲

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading slash potentially reviewing or kudo'ing, depending on how I choose to celebrate or ignore my birthday proceedings, I might start on the next installment.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Haha WHOOPS, lets post chapter's 8 and 9 and FORGET SEVEN, sorry if it's got some typos, I'll look over it in a bit

 

 ◈¯`•.☆∁ℏᴬ℘⊥ⓔʀ●$ℯv̶ℰ₦☆.•`¯◈

Shivering, something that he was not accustomed to, the fast forward footage that had been projecting through both of their eyes flickered, and the scenes that once bent to fit the was fell away in pixels. And all Jack could do was walk straightforward, approaching the boy on the bed who was bawling uncontrollably, and throw his arms around him—despite the fact that, truly, he was only hugging himself. 

"I didn't know..." Hiccup shook, with his face buried in his arms and the scale pressed so tightly in his fist that his fingers were turning white, "...I never knew..."

The sobs were coming in clearly, but the speech was all muffled, and Jack had never wanted something to be over so badly.

"I never...remembered...after my fall," the boy's body rose upward, his sleeves circling his eyes like washrags, "I never remembered it before..." Hiccup's voice trailed away, caught in a bout of crying that Jack would have walked a million miles to stop the sound of. But even sitting right next to him, the other boy still couldn't see him, and would never have known the difference.

Sighing inwardly, deeply, and burdened, Jack slid off the bed slowly, slipping over towards the window. He now one what Tooth had meant when she'd warned him of the risk he'd taken by ingesting extracted memories. Understanding that it not only allowed him to harbor those memories of Hiccup's, but also bled his own fragments of fated remembrance into them as well. 

Consequently, it was almost too cruel and unusual that, even now, after they had become apart of one another's thoughts, that neither could communicate with the other. Or even sense the proximity that Jack was not doing so well establishing; but the pale teen couldn't get close enough to the empty space. Even going right through someone had felt better than falling through himself, reliving the moment where he cascaded from the clouds of ash and smoke and sunk one thousand, nine hundred, and thirty-six feet below sea level. 

However, whenever the sequence would flash like a flip book of freeze frames throughout his endless nightmares, all he could remember was the falling and the crashing and the going cold... _but I knew paid such close attention to the final moments I spent with him..._ Jack frowned... _those never came up in the dreams..._ he breathed laboredly, feeling tears that he wanted to cry more profusely when they froze and denied him the chance, unable to escape the imagery of fading out beneath Hiccup's terrified, almost childlike fear. 

He had gone into that battle a man, and Jack had chased him down as if he were an infant, forcing him to stare the death of his best friend in the face, and leaving Hiccup so broken that suddenly Jack found himself thinking perhaps he had received too merciful a death. 

_A lot of people say drowning's not so bad,_ icy blue auras closed, trying to imagine it once more,  _all the writers and the poets,_ Jack thought calmly, breathing in and out slowly before holding his breath,  _they say if you just ease into the water, that it will take you in its arms, blanketing you in warm waves that will rock you to sleep for al eternity..._ inhaling deeply through his nose to replenish his air source, Jack sat up and shook his head.

If truth be told, he didn't really remember dying; just hitting the water and sinking beneath it. However, the second half of this own toothed emory had been more than enough for Jack, and he couldn't ever stand the thought of seeing more fire. Hiccup, on the other hand, was still laying flat against his bed, stroking the scale thoughtfully in his fingers. 

"Where did you come from?" he turned it around thoughtfully, like a stone or a coin between his fingers. "Because I know where you should be..." he stared at the once sunken scale that was evidently warped and smoothed over by the restless beating of currents, "and there's...just no way it's really you."

His freckled seemed to out like the little lights on North's globe, so fast that it was taking so much out of Jack, twisting him up because there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. 

"But..."

Hiccup continued speaking, pausing, hesitating, and glancing around the room, suddenly uneasy. Jack's overly observant eyes latched onto the rotations of deep, green eyes searching through the emptiness for some symmetry to fold in and out of the shadows, and stood on the edge of his toes. 

"If you're out there... _god_ ," Hiccup stared at the ceiling, wiping his eyes, "this is so stupid," he reprimanded himself, scolding the stupid idealistic boy inside him that he couldn't seem to kill. His eyebrows seemed to furrow towards the barely visible  _J_ within the frost which was now streaking and refreezing, and his eyes appeared to ask,  _he's never coming back, is he?_ It must have been  _something_ about him at least, Jack deduced when the smaller boy closed his eyes, steadying himself, and speaking quietly. 

"But if that's really you Jack...I...I don't know  _how_...or why...but..." small, slender shoulders began to shake violently, "but I  _really_ miss you," he blurted out, and for a split second, when Jack laid his phantom fingers over the boy's shoulder—the redhead jumped.

Sucking in a sharp breath, Jack's hand retracted in sheer fear, clenching it tightly in his other fist as if to protect it from the one thing he'd been just dying for, for the past three years. It was sharp, sudden, and slightly electrifying—scaring the crap out of Jack, but jumpstarting his heart to a  hundred and eighty beats per minute as Hiccup's whole body seemed to stiffen and plank. 

Sitting rigidly, reaching one hand slowly up his chest and to the empty space where he'd sworn he'd just felt someone else's, the look on Hiccup's face made it look like he was going to get sick. Hyperventilating ever so slightly, he breathed in and out as best he could, but Jack was selfishly fixed with the focus that they were  _this_ much closer—immediately returning to his frozen vault against the window, raising his staff horizontally, and giving off a very specific flip of the wrist. 

_Drip. Drip. Driiip. Driiiiip. Drip._

Hiccup's head shot up in the same direction as Jack's body, and just the idea was exciting him, but the emotional and psychological hell he had put, and was  _continuing_ to put, Hiccup through hollowed his eyes a little more when the smaller boy lashed out. Falling to his knees, frantically trying to sponge up the water on the floor repeating, "No, please, no more. No more.  _Please_ "

It was too late though, and Jack had three total memories and three total phases, all of which  must be completed.  _i'm sorry_ , he whispered, frowning at the distress, but turning his eyes in the opposite direction.  _I picked this next one special though..._ Jack trailed off in a blush, burning as red as fire against the pale, pearly skin it was melting the words away from.

"I'm not all bad," Jack sniffled, but griping under the shyness of context, "this should make you smile..." the sound of his voice dwindling down once more, as nervous as Hiccup when he'd spoke aloud. "This is where we started... _us_."

Slipping away in thick sheets this time as momentum gave way to gravity instead of melting off in raindrops into puddles, a handful of wooden shavings fell out from within the deep imprints of snow, completely soft and dry. Followed by the sound of smoothed over stones slipping out onto the door, one at a time, like cubes out of an ice tray, sliding all over the ground. 

Hiccup paused, still on his knees, pressing a drenched rag against the wetness that he couldn't absorb, when he noted a small, shiny gray pebble bouncing beneath his fingers. Although similar in shape and texture to the scale, the weight of this object displaced the negative value of the object in his hand and his chest became a quarter of a pound lighter, but his eyes still lingered uneasily around the room; searching—seeing—knowing...but never finding. 

Sighing, he leaned backward, stretching his arms behind himself and propping his body against his palms. "Jack?" he tried again, squinting his eyes, then peaking a second after saying it, trying to glance around for any sudden movement or shifts in light. However he neither felt nor saw a thing.

Although as he tossed a pebble up and down in his grasp, Hiccup considered the single fact that he'd been wrong about seeing Jack once before...he'd not remembered his fall from the ascending airborne hell three years ago, all he could remember was waking up with a wooden leg. 

"So, maybe this is kind of like that time..." the auburn youth murmured aloud to himself, holding his face in thought, glancing around with his eyebrows furrowed, knowing this whole idea was folly and childish. 

Even though he underwent no further out of body contact, nor did he receive any sort of response for this farce of fate he'd been assigned to comply with, Hiccup tossed one of those smooth stones in the air and caught it with a tight, firm grip after thinking the objects over for awhile. After turning the wood shavings over in his palms and sprinkling them across the ground from his fist however, sight and touch were not enough to identify with this time.

With his hands in his pockets, choosing to float behind rather than follow in his footsteps, Jack drifted along next to Hiccup, who had spent over three hours alone in his bedroom, pondering over the obscure items before finally chancing to lean close enough to the shreds of soft tree bark to catch their scent. It was a peculiar aroma, something so subtle, but so distinct that you could never forget it. 

Walking through the snow blanketed trails and crude, man-made pathways that wound endlessly through the  _Forgotten Forest_ , Jack spun his staff overhead, summoning the downpour of little, fluffy white flurries to lighten the otherwise dismal mood surrounding them.  _I suppose this is why they don't schedule any sort of 'hunt' in the wintertime_ , Jack glanced around from the equally pathetic display of his abandoned friend and himself wandering disoriented and heart broken through the forest in the dead of night,  _because everything is dark, and bleak, and so fucking depressing,_ Jack shook his head, accidentally transforming a few flurries into a full on snow shower.  _I guess it can't be helped_ , the boy sighed, continuing to levitate alongside Hiccup's strong and steady strides through the tundra, admiring the boy's sense of direction and determination. 

It made him feel good inside—like somebody still cared. Like  _Hiccup_ still cared, that he wanted to believe. Jack smiled, staring down at the boy's freckled face from a birds-eye-view, taking in the sight as familiarly as breathing, savoring the sweet breath of life he felt filling his lungs.  _He really does want to see me,_ his chest swelled, continuing to watch Hiccup with invasively observant blue eyes as reflections of crystalized snow danced romantically in his gaze, and Jack couldn't help but slip into the mood of this next memory. 

Stopping outside a narrow enclosure, where the trees parted in the middle of the woods to give way to a clearing, they both paused in the center of the entryway; taking deep breaths in preparation, Jack noticed the fist at Hiccup's side, curling small fingers into the spaces where his should be.  _He's scared_ , the pallor boy realized softly, stepping up next to the trembling figure, who had never quite stopped shaking, and folded his fingers through Hiccup's invisibly. 

_THUMP._ The space in Jack's chest jumpstarted again, and for another fraction of a second, the feeling beneath his fingers was flesh on flesh, undergoing the sensation of small, frantic fingertips grabbing on tightly. Not tight enough to keep Jack from materializing back into thin air, but enough to squeeze the next memory reel into motion, narrowing his thoughts down to one idea and one idea only: the way Jack Frost felt pressed up against him... 

_It was an unusually warm day, without a cloud in the sky, or even an overbearing sun to overshadow the loveliness with extreme highs and lows; instead, the day was absolutely perfect in every consideration, and Jack and Hiccup had wandered far from home again, into the outskirts of the world they could call their own._

_Pushing back the branches to the clearing no one but them knew about, Jack held back the thick boughs of the Smoke Pine Tree, creating an opening for Hiccup to duck through._

_"Thanks," the green eyed boy smiled as Jack released his grip, wafting the scent of matches and pine softly through the air, a smell that had become kind of like home to them after these past few months._

_Catching up to the few feet the smaller boy had distanced himself, Jack made sure to stay in sync with his strides, not falling behind or ahead, staying nowhere but his side. It had been months since their last squabble, since the night Jack had pushed his friend up against the back of his own house and kissed him longer than he'd ever kissed any girl in his life. Yes, it had been enough time to ease the tension and create such new fun in its place; complicating everything between them into a series of awkwardly crossed boundaries and unspoken words, but Jack couldn't even help it anymore._

_Stopping next to the stream, Hiccup knelt down to test the water, leisurely dipping a set of small, slender fingers beneath the surface; sinking down to the bottom to trace over the curvatures of the smooth, flawless tones that lined the bottom as soft as any sand. Unaware that he was being watched, or that Jack had followed him to the edge, Hiccup felt his back sticking to someone's chest when he tried pushing himself back to his feet._

_Instantaneously , the smaller boy's stomach burst into a fit of knots, feeling Jack's chin rest against his shoulder, looking down at the handful of pebbles Hiccup knew he had no interest in, and snaking his hand under the auburn haired boy's arm. Fingering through the gray, black, and orange colored rocks._

_"These are pretty good ones," Jack remarked, tracing each stone delicately, brushing the palm of the other's hand beneath his fingertips on purpose, and ever so slightly._

_"What's the occasion this time?" Hiccup asked evenly. His heart beat against his chest, but he remained objective rather than inferior, finding Jack to be dominating that role otherwise._

_Inhaling  slowly, the scent of fires from the forge mixed sensually with spice and cinnamon, and the brunette's face inclined inward to draw a deeper breath. "Why should I need a reason to want to be near you?"_

_"Because," the smaller boy elbowed Jack's gut, just enough to release himself and regain control of his personal space. "You tend to have the most **bizarre** compulsions," he smiled sweetly, but slanted his eyes knowingly. _

_This was Jack's favorite side of Hiccup though, the side that wasn't quite advanced, but not quite nearly innocent—the side that threw punches instead of empty headed stares—the side of Hiccup that he could always count on to make him do something crazy. Or stupid. Or both._

_"Speaking of bizarre compulsions," the mimicry rolled off Jack's tongue with just the right amount of sway, matching the motions of his arms as they pulled his shirt up and overhead, "remember how you said you'd teach me how to swim?"_

_"Oh yeah—teaching lessons on a Saturday— **love it** ," Hiccup's eyes rolled sarcastically, but slipped upwards and over the lean, yet surprisingly muscular stomach exposed in front of him.  _

_Jack stepped closer, reaching up adorably to scratch the lock of hair behind his ear, "Aw, please? You promised me, y'know?"_

_The other sighed, "I know, I know."_

_Slender fingers found their way around the hem of a small, green shirt, "Well, then let's go-go-go," Jack grinned, beginning to lift it just enough to tease._

_"Stop it!" Hiccup's confidence fell into a flustering fit, never quite able to outgrow his self-esteem complex as he shoved down his shirt, making sure no skin showed at all._

_"It's only me," the other boy whispered, fingers still holding the edge of his shirt, but not forcing it any direction._

_"Exactly," emerald eyes emphasized, the bridge of his nose burning red._

_**Oh god, don't do that to**   **me** , Jack groaned inwardly, but it was so adorable that his fingers furrowed more tightly, leaning forward into such a strained tension that held between them. Narrowing his deep, chocolate brown eyes in on the stunning green spectrum, Jack's teeth parted in a sexy smirk, delicately nipping the other's nose with a soft, affectionate sort of frustration. "I guess you never know what I'll do next," he grinned, red in the face, but not the least embarrassed.  _

_"Which is why I can't take you seriously," the other boy's voice pulled away, with more sentiment than he meant, but redder than he had been five minutes ago._

_"Well you should," the taller boy spoke quietly, in that even, sincere sort of tone that sent shivers up Hiccup's spine, "because I want you; seriously."_

_Hiccup's mouth opened, then shut, then opened again, until gluing itself back together angrily. "It's not funny Jack," his eyes averted, "c'mon, don't do this to me."_

_"Why not?" the brunette encircled him halfway, swaying from side to side._

_"Because—"_

_"What?"_

_"Because I—"_

_"Because you don't like it?" Jack guessed outwardly, not in the mood for games, and always too easily offended at any sign of a slight._

_"No," Hiccup spoke abruptly, drawing out the sound of his voice over the other boy forcefully, shoving Jack's hands away, "because I **do** like it..." _

_But the words were so rushed that he was left staring at them as soon as they'd left his mouth, ever conflicted by the trails his eyes were drawing around the invisible word bubble, as well as the steady rising and falling of a toned chest standing way too closer to his own._

_Taken briefly aback, Jack took a literal step backward, then forward once more, "Then why are you asking me to stop?" he coaxed, pulling Hiccup along by the shirt end, closer and closer to the water._

_The boy's mouth trembled, "Because you're **you** Jack." _

_"What's that supposed to mean?"_

_"That I'm **me** ," the other looked downward, somewhere off towards the ground. _

_Now Jack's anger was escalating, "and what is **that** supposed to mean?" he demanded, taking a step forward and causing the other to take one back.  _

_"I'm just, I'm all— **this** ," Hiccup gestured hurriedly up and down himself, rushing through the gesture as if it were somehow making everything worse. "And you're all—all— **that** ," green eyes died out in a sigh, tracing the pattern downward unintentionally from the nape of Jack's neck, across the curvature of chest, and even lower. _

_"Yeah?" Jack asked angrily, taking another step forward, "Well maybe I **want** all this," he impersonated the same gesture.  _

_The other swallowed, growing nervous, feeling flushed, and constantly pulling at the bottom of his shirt. "Stop gesturing to all of me," he complained, feeling his freckles burning beneath the deepening spectrums of scarlet across his skin._

_"No," Jack shook his head stubbornly, brown locks swaying from side to side as he refused to take his eyes off the boy in front of him. "Because I **want** all of you," he stepped forward again, just barely seventeen and too audacious for his own good.  _

_Stepping backward in a miscalculation of space, Hiccup's foot caught the edge of the pond, slipping involuntarily on the instability of slick mud and shallow rooted grass, tumbling back on his butt with a splash. But as soon as he recovered himself, Jack was already closing in and coming after him._

_The looks on his friend's face were merciless, making Hiccup so red in the face that he honestly thought he may die of embarrassment. The pant legs of Jack's khakis grew heavy, and began to weigh down with water, turning a darker grayish color, and sticking to his legs whenever he took another step. Walking forward until he was kneeling downward and his whole lower body was submerged, sitting in front of Hiccup with the most serious expression._

_Catching in his throat, green eyes grew wider, and the boy's back pressed up against the other side of the shallow shoreline. "Don't tease me," he stared down, avoiding eye contact, but never failing to encircle Jack's abdomen, unintentionally or not._

_Gently leaning forward, pressing his hands on either side of Hiccup's body and sinking his fingers into the smooth stones, he curled his joints underneath them and leaned forward. "Is that what you think I'm doing?" he asked softly._

_"It's what you **always** do," Hiccup snapped. "You never take anything seriously, then you," his hands began to rise in dramatic, incomplete gestures, "then you do some shit like this and expect me to—" _

_Jack's lips aligned with the words, parting Hiccup's mouth slowly, and sliding the length of his tongue along the soft, sweet surface, tilting his head to the side, and then pulling away with the sound of a gentle kiss. "Shut up," Jack whispered, reaching one hand forward, and pulling Hiccup's tinted face in closer. "Just **shut up** ," he breathed against the edges of his lips, teasing them open with his just enough as he crawled closer; with his knees on either side of Hiccup, resting against the other boy's slender hips. _

_Hiccup squirmed, but didn't resist, releasing a deep breath and bringing his fingers to his lips, covering them as if it could possibly take it all back. "But we can't..."_

_"But we are," Jack mewed, sliding his hands along Hiccup's legs, hooking all his fingers under the soaked fabric of the shirt that was sticking suggestively to his frame, exposing the small protruding hipbones where it had ridden up._

_A small groan emitted the smaller boy, both hands automatically covering the other's, still self-conscious and hesitant; but he didn't have the heart to be laughed at. " **Don't** Jack," he spoke ineffectually, losing his eyes in the other's pooling gaze, his heart threatening to palpitate right out of his chest. "Just don't."_

_Slim, slippery hands sliding up underneath the fabric anyways, each digit creasing along the smooth curves and indentations of the lean, naturally tones surface; so opposite of anything he'd ever formed attractions over, but it was entrancing him being disregard._

_"I don't **care** that you're skinny, okay?" he pinned nervous hands at their sides. "I told you, I want  **this** ," brown eyes looked him up and down, " **all** of this."_

_Flinching at the straightforward, unfailing repetition of responses, Hiccup stared into the unflinching sincerity across from him, losing his voice under the embarrassment. "But you could have anyone," he sighed, unable to concentrate with such a perfect creature pressing down on him, " **Anyone**..."_

_Jack cracked a side smile, repositioning their hands until their palms were mirroring, folding their fingers between in the empty spaces and squeezing them securely. "Anyone isn't you, Hiccup," he was grinning bashfully, burning up but leaning closer, pressing his lips gently on and off, "And that's all I want."_

_Hiccup's hands held onto Jack's. "But **why**?" he asked, angling his eyes upward in this expansive, innocent stare that brown eyes were immediately fixed on._

_"You're my best friend." The sentence slipped out so easily, Jack's eyes narrowing in, unable to disconnect, watching the slow rise and fall of Hiccup's chest, and tracing it u the nap of his neck until he froze. The other boy had closed the space, wrapping his arms around the brunette's neck as Jack stared back, resting his forehead against Hiccup's with a soft smile, "It was always an occupational hazard."_

_\---_

 


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woof. I have no idea why I've been so incredibly lazy and never continued to retype and post the chapters for this that I've had complete for years...probably due the discouragement that chapter 13 took me I think...two or plus years to finally finish ahah and it was like RECENTLY, aka some insanity of writers bloc and too many drafts and it was all just a discouraging mess. But, since somebody misc. left me review on that chapter the other day, for a fic that had essentially died because, well, three years is a rather long time, I was like, "Well, shit!" maybe I'll revisit this. So I decided to write up a few more to get reacquainted with my own story. This one is INSANELY short. But, chapter 9's a crowd pleaser haha

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`·. Chapter Eight ♥  
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It was a strange memory to come back from, and even stranger to relive. Like being put back together after years of falling apart. Sighing steadily, Jack breathed in the past seventeen, allowing the memories to dance delicately around him like intricate snowflakes. Each one floated amidst the other in a gentle, yet blundering gust, creating nothing but white space. In Hiccup's hand was as slender blue flower with a stem as pale as polished moonstone, whose petals were kissed with frost, and bright blue eyes were clenched tightly, both nervous and excited.

As reality remained frozen, just a little longer, the crystallized stars floated about freely, and Jack's skies were overcast with both an omniscient and obsolete downpour. They had been torn apart and then pieced back together, they had lost one another and then tried desperately to find that which had been lost—and now they were standing several feet away, and were left with merely seconds.

Jack's breath caught in his throat, knowing that this was the final phase—the final memory—the final moment to everything he had ever hoped for—but only Hiccup could determine the direction of their fate now.

The green-eyed boy had received the first and second phases ideally, and passed the routine examination with flying colors—the first had been meant to destroy, and the second to resurrect, but now it was up to the third to maintain. However, Jack had not known what to make of the situation when his friend turned towards the shoreline instead of the forest...where he should have returned to the enclosure...

Confusedly, Jack watched each unique consistency create a different series of images, until one calmly drifted onto the bridge of his nose, where it dissolved immediately. The flower was an unusual breed—unlike any other that grew anywhere else in the world—and the exact same one Jack had given him the day before he died. It was supposed to be unmistakeable. 

He felt an icy chill as the droplet traced down along his cheek to his chin, and found himself searching desperately to regain the warmth. Inching closer and closer to the body between the frosted forcefield keeping them apart, Jack once again took hold of the hand he couldn't feel, and refused to let go. 

This particular memory was as steadfast and as fleeting as the snow—equal in intricacy and inimitability—without the scientific accuracy or predictability, he had no warning. Hiccup took a sharp turn instead of going straight, and the scenery that slipped into still-frames around them formed in the last way Jack ever expected them to...

_Bells…they were tolling, echoing endlessly through the air in such an eminent series of chimes…bells…but Jack couldn’t remember ever hearing such a sound…and suddenly he found that this memory never belonged to him…_

_Instead his body hovered overhead, levitating lifelessly, confusedly in the snowfall as he stared down at a circle of faces he once knew so well. Everyone was there—Hiccup, Stoic, Gobber, Astrid, Fishlegs, Ruffnut & Tuffnut, and even Snotlout. _ **_No_** _, his head shook frantically,_ **_no, this isn’t right, this wasn’t supposed to be what you thought of…_** _he cringed, and the most terrible trembling took hold of his body as he watched a casket descending deep into the earth, creaking and lowering to the rhythm of bells…bells…such an eerie sound…_

Hiccup pushed back the thick tree limbs leading to a fissure in the forest, just before the shoreline on the other side of a steep cliff—the shore they could both hear breaking and crashing against the jagged compilation of rocks.

_“Loss is not an easy thing to understand,” Hiccup began, his voice already beginning to swell in his chest. “It isn’t something you can see, or touch—but it is a part of you. A piece of you—,” his lips trembled, “that you find you can no longer feel.” All five fingers folded tightly around the perforated edges of notebook paper, “It’s the moment when you can feel the rest slipping, the moment you know in your gut that you can’t hold on, but you fight it anyways, hoping somehow to reach out and grab it…”_

Sinking slowly against the smooth slanting surface of a large bolder, Hiccup allowed himself to slide along until his feet hit the first ledge, and continued downward in a similar series of motions. The shallow pond in the middle of the scenery sat still and frozen—the wind creaking indiscernibly through the trees. He hadn’t made a sound since leaving the clearing—since retracing his footsteps back to his room where he’d faced the frozen vault head on, and pried away at its falling form before Jack could even allow it to melt.

Clawing and hacking like his fingertips had been icepicks, Hiccup broke through the surface and chipped away all the frost, leaving jagged indentations in place of the smooth, flawless finish. Breathing in slowly—so slowly that Jack thought he’d gone mad—the boy labored tirelessly until all that was left between him and the third object was a glassy, film-like layer of ice that shattered beneath his touch. Falling down to the ground with such an ear splintering sound, yet hitting the floor beneath them as softly as snowflakes, Hiccup had hardly appeared to hear it. Instead, he reached forth confidently, wrapping each shivering finger delicately around the stem, and left his room before a single, solitary thought could form. 

Like he knew exactly what he had to do. 

_Jack could feel his stomach echo hollowly, desperately trying to produce a beat that refused to resuscitate, and as he peered down at all the unsure faces exchanging hesitant glances—he knew for the first time what it truly felt like to feel absolutely nothing…bells…so many bells…_

Back amidst the unturned underbrush of his own secret garden, Hiccup had already taken the time to realize he hadn’t revisited this place in longer than he could remember—but none of it seemed to matter. And Jack floated behind, following reluctantly, but terrified as they flashed in and out of the memory involuntarily and disconnected.

_“…When I realized Jack was gone…” the statement seemed to paralyze him, “that’s what it felt like—like some part of me was missing, and I couldn’t find it, no matter how hard I looked. I couldn’t believe it—_ **_refused_ ** _to believe it,” his eyes turned sharply to the ground, “and I know I might never understand—but it will never take away from the hole that’s been left in all of our hearts…”_

Hiccup walked slowly, secretively, and as if he knew more than ever he was being followed, until he stopped in front of a crude headstone, on which he’d carved the epitaph that. 

_Stopping briefly, the gazes pooling around him in desperate concern were not met; instead, Hiccup breathed in and out deeply, as if to force the tears at bay long enough for him to finish._

Jack’s eyes rounded sadly, not ever expecting fourteen, ordinary words from a famous writer to fill him with the most excruciating pain he had ever known. 

_…bells…all he could hear were bells…_

“I’d never heard anything describe you so perfectly,” Hiccup seemed to turn in Jack’s direction, still glancing for something that was never there. “You never cared much for the book, but you were Gatsby if there ever was one,” Hiccup smiled, in that sad sort of way that suppressed all the rest from falling out. 

_“…That’s the worst thing about loss, I think,” he offered, “that it’s irreplaceable. There won't ever be another Jack—nobody who can ever hope to restore his vitality, or the hopefulness he filled us with…”_

“ _‘So we beat on, boats against the current,’_ ” Hiccup’s lips parted slowly, wetting them with his tongue when they instantly cracked and became dry, “ _‘borne back ceaselessly into the past.’_ ”

_“…There won’t ever be another smile that shines quite as bright, or a person capable of having quite as much fun as he could; no, Jack was one of a kind…”_

Jack sidestepped into Hiccup, flickering in and out of these strobe-light scintillations of past and present freeze-frames fracturing their motions into disjoining seconds, and tried once more to grab onto his hand. Flashing through the sound of bell and shallow breathing, he felt the pressure of someone else, somewhere out of body, bypassing between the beating tintinnabulations that were constantly tearing him away as Hiccup removed his hand. 

_Bells…such low, aching, echoing…bells…tolling…softly…tolling…always…bells….for him…tolling…_

Kneeling, Hiccup rested his forehead against the gravestone he’d erected himself, in the silence of the realm he’d once found a dragon in, squeezing his hand around the side of it, as if to draw from its unwavering stability. Clenching his eyelids together tightly, he released the flower from within his almost suffocating grasp and allowed it to float, almost feather-like, down onto the snow-covered earth without a sound.

“Please,” he whispered, pushing himself to his feet, both emerald eyes still behind his eyelids as his heart was overwhelmed with the chambers of another—beating almost so rhythmically that he swore he could hear the sound of bells. “ _Please_ , Jack,” Hiccup repeated, and expanded, inching towards the emptiness that was looping endlessly in cycles that were far from lifeless.

_“…Unlike anything, or anyone I’ve ever known…And if he were here,” a faint smile cracked beneath the unerring composure…_

“If you’re _really_ here,” Hiccup breathed against the air, bracing himself with one arm gently extending, his fingers set into a trembling fist that began to unfurl as hesitantly as his eyes, shooting through the pitch black moonlight like the green light at the end of the dock—disappearing in and out of sight.  

_“…You know that he’d be the first to crack a joke instead of a sob-story—the first person to tell you everything will be alright before you have the chance to realize it won’t—”_

_Please, please, please,_ Jack bounced nervously, his eyes chasing the unpredictable flashbulbs around him that were snapping his neck in every direction they were cast, pushing him backward, terrified, and dissolving everything into discolored dots. 

_“And he would be the only one to tell you that nothing truly goes away until you stop believing in it.”_

The vibrancy continued to vanish every time he blinked, and the image in front of Hiccup became an inconsistent blur of light and shadows. Reality streaked colorlessly with every heartbeat, and his eyes remained closed, “Then let me see you,” he concentrated hard, pressing his lids down into tears, as Jack stepped backward and held his breath. 

_….bells…bells…bellsbellsbellsbellsbells…the sound kept getting faster, and faster, ripping through his hair and around his body indiscernibly as his heart beat in unison, faster, and faster, and faster still…bells_ **_beat_ ** _bells_ **_beat_ ** _bells_ **_beat_ ** _bells_ **_beat_ ** _…and Jack could hardly grasp any sense of awareness as he’d become completely metaphysical, forcing his way forward, his motions fracturing as he morphed in and out of eyesight, and discolored spotlights splintered him into a flip-book._

His arms and legs felt just as choppy as the disjoining freeze-frames that leapt from shadow to shadow. _Pleasepleaseplease,_ Jack sputtered a spastic, but constant, rhythm that slurred the sound together after repeating it indecipherably in his head. Squinting and straining his eye to see through the stormy strobes as disorienting shades flashed and flooded in constant motions. “Hiccup,” he spoke outwardly, but the sound seemed to bounce back at him, devoid of an echo as the noise was neither transmitted nor received. 

_“And I don’t think it’s possible anyways,” Hiccup continued, pulling a flower from inside his jacket absentmindedly, running his fingers along the petals, “to ever stop believing in something you love…”_

“I never meant to,” Hiccup pleaded, his fingers flinching back inward as they reopened as slowly as the first flowers of spring waiting to break through the frost, slowly but surely gathering all of their strength. He hardly even allowed himself to breathe, sucking in a sigh as his tears fell, distraught and heartbroken against the emptiness that refused to form in their place. 

“I know,” Jack whispered back this time, feeling unexplainably weak as the bells tolled onward and took something back with them that he couldn’t quite place, but his heart dropped. Realizing he wasn’t sure if he had one at all, clenching the space on his breast as he backed up even farther into the wall, unnerved as he noticed a pair of unmoving emerald eyes glued to his silhouette. 

_“Because I think that it’s a part of you…”_

There was a pitter-patter that outpaced the palpitations in Hiccup’s chest, and he stepped forward fast enough to see a blinking blue orb shoot across the rocks in a streak of unchallenged, white light. 

_All along, he’d had enough time to see it coming and exactly enough after to avoid a casualty, but gave into inaction instead and chose to close his eyes. Jack lost all sense of direction and then he lost direct control, but what he would never know was what made it so effortless to get lost in the light…_

Staring directly into the unfaltering green auras that peered hopefully through endless darkness, Jack started crying against his own control, and his heart chased the biggest space in front of him that he could fix into a focal point, and tried to run until he became its shadow, but he couldn’t move. 

_…tolling…bells…beating…ceasing…bells…breath…breathing…ceasing…the last sound…the only sound…bells…the worst sound…_

Hiccup choked, but the weight in his chest was a mix of too many emotions, and he felt an undeniable presence—an unexplainable connection—as his eyes began eclipsing with the faint symmetry outlined in the curves and crevasses of the cavern. “Jack, I still believe,” the sound of his voice kissed the staggered breathing of his best friend’s ghost unknowingly, and green eyes closed once more, rendering Jack to the darkness. 

_“Just like Jack will always be a part of all of us,” Hiccup offered as the tears slipped slowly from each eyelid, tracing his cheeks, and slowly weight down the petals as they cascaded in unstoppable streams…_

And amidst the darkness that danced indistinguishably in his eyes that had become overcast with petrifying paralysis, Jack closed them calmly, and forced himself to embrace his only fear—the fear of life—the fear of living— the fear that brought back the possibility of death—and then he craned his neck forward blindly and Hiccup’s hand extended. Moving forward magnetically, he almost flinched away from it

_“…Just like he’ll always be a part of me. My best-friend,” he sniffled, no longer fearing the future quite as he had before, “Forever and always.”_

Lowering his forehead, Jack breathed in slowly, weightlessly, and so intertwined with the entity across from him; withdrawing hesitantly, before stepping forward and resting it against the palm of Hiccup’s hand in the most simple gesture of trust…

_The whole world froze…_

…Time stood still.

_And space broke into a million pieces…_

…Feeling was faint. 

_Oxygen was scarce…_

…But Jack was breathing…

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	9. Chapter Nine

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Bells faded, and steady breathing took their place; eyes refocused, and then were met. It was the sweetest, swiftest form of contact, and Jack withdrew, almost disbelievingly, when he could feel every second of it.

Overwhelmed, unsure, and ultimately terrified—Hiccup stood across from him unchallenged, but unable to speak. His lips formed words, but produced no sound—Jack stepped forward, and the other stood motionless. It was an ungodly silence that seemed to last for hours, swallowing them into a sea of subliminal thought and dreamlike motion—even the slightest movements felt unreal, and neither of them could breathe. 

Everything became nothing, and nothing became everything. 

And for a second, Jack forgot all about the falling and the fracturing. He forgot about endless echoes and future complications; he forgot everything in that instance. He wasn’t nervous, in truth, but for some reason, he felt incredibly shy. It was unusual, but there was something stirring about it, something that made Jack forget himself, and he could see it in Hiccup’s face for the first time in three years. 

The redhead readjusted his eyes, and Jack saw his reflection go in and out of focus. It felt like he was looking at something that wasn’t there before, something he wasn’t sure he recognized, and Jack could feel Hiccup’s deep viridian eyes begin to dig deeper, pulling him under, as the silence caught in the pallor boy’s throat. 

“Your hair…” Hiccup spoke softly, several fingers reaching forward to frame ghost like strands between them, searching inconsistently to find something recognizable as he breathed in every feature unclearly at first. Gently caressing the locks, Hiccup let them fall as his palm flattened, framing the side of Jack’s face as it slid down the smooth surface of skin and held his cheek, “…and your eyes,” he continued to take in the detail, “they’re blue,” Hiccup tipped his head to the side. Focusing in on the intricate irises of aquamarine and ice that alternated in rings, allowing his fingers to trace the skin around the other’s eyelids ever so slightly. “It’s really you…” his eyes assessed calmly, falling back in love with every second glance as he juxtaposed the appearance between past and present. 

Jack’s eyes drew closed reflexively, pulling his face into the unfamiliar presence, burrowing ever so slightly against the other’s hand, and then embraced the overwhelming electricity in his heart. In tune with each other even in the absence of communication, Hiccup continued to explore with his freehand falling back against Jack’s hair, running his fingers gently through the soft discoloration, pushing loose strands out of his face. 

“Please say something,” Hiccup pleaded, and the words were met with the unavoidable swelling of salt, unsettling as it sank through his eyes and fell through the space between them. 

However, Jack was too concentrated on the contact, too wrapped up in over three years of empty spaces to even fathom the formulation of words; instead, his eyes remained closed and his usually strong, now shaking hands, moved to cover Hiccup’s gently, aligning and pressing his fingers along the identical spaces. 

“Jack, please…” the tone grew more frantic, forcing the tears not to flood too far into his voice as the eyes across from his reopened to meet his gaze, pooling into Hiccup’s with such a delicate intensity. 

“I don’t know what to say,” Jack admitted, almost inaudibly, losing the sound of his voice and drowning through the tears scintillating in soft emerald eyes—feeling the touch and go of electricity of Hiccup’s palms repositioning against his face and through his hair. “I’ve waited so long,” he laughed at his own stupidity, “…and I have no idea what to say.” 

Both of them inched forward hesitantly, as unsure as their nearly paralyzed limbs, irrefutably withdrawing back to the inability of knowing exactly how or where to pick back up after so much time had passed them by. They’d been leading separate lives—living in separate worlds—and even all that time had not been nearly enough to resolve the tension of conflicting emotions.

So many things were swelling in Jack’s chest, and it was equivalent to experiencing every single emotion simultaneously within a ten second time frame of uncontrollable happenstance. It was one of those instances where it feels like you’re listening to a song that used to remind you of someone else, and the whole time it’s playing your face gets hot and your stomach tenses because all you can think about is what would happen if it played when you were with them. 

Overanalyzing every lyric, debating to yourself if every last parallel is accurate, and whether or not the parts that aren’t will offend or mislead that person as a result—all the while knowing none of the above matters when the subtext is so mutually obvious. But then Jack just stood there and Hiccup left it alone. Like they both knew how hard this was for the other. Like the chorus had repeated for the third time in a row already, and the song was almost over, but they were both reading too far into it to change the track.

And it _was—_ so painfully obvious, in both of their eyes, as the tension diffused between the exchanging frequencies, unspoken words paralyzing them within the pre-position of something they could never have planned for. Even when all the meanings were implied, neither of them could bring themselves to speak any further, and now both of them were exhausted. 

Hiccup was watching him—concentrating and refocusing on every detail—like the song had started spontaneously playing again, and Jack knew he had to face the music—had to move in sync with the rhythm—had to drown all over again. 

It was funny how that worked, how ever since the first time—he’d been drowning. Drowning in the inconsistencies—drowning in the advancing—drowning in himself. And it was rendering both of them mercilessly to the disconnected memories. To the fragments of here and now that only fate could hope to explain. 

 _Do something_ , Jack hissed inwardly, _say something, you moron._ But he couldn’t, every syllable caught in his throat, and Hiccup was swallowing every word he wasn’t saying. His eyes were so wide—so terrified—so entranced— _so goddamn beautiful,_ Jack sighed in frustration, wondering how he could dream of something for so long and then stare at it silently, succumbing to the fact he was a complete idiot. _You’re supposed to be dead,_ Jack reminded himself, shifting obliviously, uncomfortably, and extrinsically between the space, pouring his eyes into the pocket of air separating them. _Hiccup is probably losing his shit—_ ** _say_** _something—_ ** _anything_** _._

But still, there was nothing.

 _Still,_ they stood, staring, anchored in anatomic positions, almost statuesque as the staccato vibrations of their disjoining breathing slipped subliminally into a soundtrack—to that one song you fear more than anything to share—to the electrifying isolation of another’s words—to the perfect procreation of thought that was so accurate they felt like your own.

His lips opened, formed to fit the words, but the silence was intimidating and Jack was scared. For so long he had fought this, the exposure—for so long he refused to feel anything at all, because it was always easier than admitting he couldn’t. However, Jack had lost sight of his confidence against the contrast of who they were and who they used to be. Both of them had changed, and the unanswerable questions as to why were restraining. The lack of familiarity, suffocating. And the post-traumatic stress of a past life was literally breaking his heart. 

Seeing Hiccup had melted something softly in the pit of his stomach, but Jack had forgotten how to swallow anything that wasn’t frozen—anything that wasn’t solid. Instead, the fluid motion was unnerving and overextending, both upsetting and exhausting all the boy’s effort. He wanted to cry—he wanted to scream—he wanted to wrap his arms around Hiccup and reverse the time they’d lost—back to when they were still spinning on the same axis. 

Breathing in and out slowly in unavoidably audible spurts, Jack’s lungs filled the air like smoke—tangible but transitory as it melted against Hiccup’s half open mouth and then dissolved before either could cut through it. 

“Jack,” he whispered, flooding forest green into his irises—offsetting the rings of emerald as they clouded, unable to understand. Unable to distinguish between what was real, and what wasn’t. 

Jack’s eye contact remained unbroken, but he didn’t breathe a single sound. Swallowing dryly, staring so fixedly, the tension rose so thickly into the air. 

Like a scene in a movie, they’d been drawn out twenty-minutes too long; and instead of a climax, they were given background music. Lost within the never-ending cacophony of alternate meaning that refused to leave Jack alone. It was a song he’d heard a hundred-thousand times, they were the words he knew by heart, and a rhythm that beat his thoughts back to Hiccup every time. To the best friend he’d ever known, the most beautiful mess of red-brown hair and too many freckles that stood across from him in senseless tears and confusion. 

 _“It’s a funny thing—isn’t it?”_ an absent echo rolled around his auditory canals, _“to come back from the dead?”_ Father Time’s voice encircling him,  _“So strange how we forget ourselves.”_

It were as if the words were provoked by Jack’s lack thereof—as if to mock his silence—but the sound churned on caustically with out reply. 

 _“A man with strings cannot stand alone, Jack. You must decide if yours are an attachment, or a part of you. If you may remove them, or if you were always meant to wear them…Detach, Jack,”_ Father Time instructed, more softly as he withdrew, “— _let go—give in—.”_ It all sounded so simple. _“Because he won’t wait forever…you’re running out of time…the rest is catching up…”_

Jack was hardly listening anymore though, closing his eyes carefully, with his back pressed against the ravine. The shiver was involuntary, but suddenly the distance was perfect, and Jack swore he’d never been more attracted to the uncertain feeling he got when the words fell away like white noise, and were replaced by a haunting melody ghosting over his skin. 

“I…I thought this is what you wanted,” Hiccup’s voice withdrew hesitantly, almost as quickly and unconfidently as when it sounded. 

But Jack’s subconscious was projecting like a speaker-system, and color flooded his face instead of words as the instrumentals shifted into smooth intonations of a song that once reminded him so very much of his friend…

**_“I don’t want this moment to ever end…”_ **

Transfixing eyes fell around Hiccup, and Jack stepped forward, “It is,” he whispered.

**_“…Where everything’s nothing without you…”_ **

_Detach_ , he told himself, already falling victim to the heart wrenching pressure swelling in his chest as his hand rose shyly to Hiccup’s face. “ _God_ , you’re so beautiful,” he breathed, transferring the sweetest innocence through such honest eyes, and closing another fraction of the space. 

**_“…I’d wait here forever just to see you smile_ **

**_Cause it’s true—I am nothing, without you…”_ **

A set of unsuspecting emerald eyes gravitated upward as the taller boy came closer and closer, pouring them into Jack’s. His face seemed uncertain, but his feet moved forward until they were chest-to-chest, and Jack could feel the rise and fall of Hiccup’s heart beating and sputtering against the irregularity of his own. 

“You must be freezing,” Jack mumbled, losing his voice in the motions of drawing the other boy against him—not quite stopping until he could feel his every outline—and knew, more than ever, that he could never let go. 

**_“…Through it all, I’ve made my mistakes_ **

**_I stumble and fall…”_ **

 

And Hiccup shook, shivering against the sensation of fingertips crawling up the length of his back and folding through his hair, “…Jack…”

It was the softest, sweetest sound; and just hearing Hiccup say his name made Jack’s fingers flex, entangling themselves further through the strands. “You really don’t know how long I’ve waited for this,” he whispered. 

**_“…but I mean these words…”_ **

“I’ve missed you so much,” Hiccup choked, finally cracking, collapsing into Jack’s chest with both hands furrowed into his sweatshirt.   
****

Lifting the other boy’s head, gently cupping his chin, Jack pressed his lips delicately against each tear as it streaked. “Not nearly as much as I’ve missed you,” he said in between baby-kisses, “I can promise you that,” Jack continued, until Hiccup’s eyes were closing and the crying had stopped.

Then emerald eyes reopened and found themselves pressed tightly into the space below Jack’s neck, breathing in the scent of fresh snow and burying his face deeper into him as the other boy removed his hands from Hiccup’s hair and held his whole body like he was terrified to let go. 

“I never thought I’d see you again…” 

**_“…I want you to know,_ **

**_With everything, I won't let this go_ **

**_These words are my heart and soul…”_ **

“I know,” Jack’s arms pulled forward, involuntarily tightening and loosening as he locked his fingers together behind the small of Hiccup’s back and buried his face into the curve of his shoulder, “I was so afraid I’d lost you.”

Now Hiccup’s arms found themselves reflexively snaked around his friends stomach, holding the other steady, “Jack, you’re shaking…”

With both eyes clenched tightly, breathing in the familiar scent, Jack felt Hiccup accepting his vulnerability, and three years worth of hopelessness left him feeling so small, and so scared, and so unable to hold back the tears. “Never let go,” the words came out all muffled beneath the salty liquid and the fabric where his lips pressed into Hiccup. “Just never let me go,” he pleaded, “I don’t ever want to be away from you, _ever_ ,” Jack breathed out jaggedly, catching on the unfailing honesty. 

**_“…I’ll hold onto this moment, you know_ **

**_As I bleed my heart out to show,_ **

**_That I won’t let go…”_ **

“I never wanted to the first time,” Hiccup’s voice cracked, cringing against the fast-forward flash of Jack’s face falling through the clouds. “And I’ll die before I ever do it again.”

Jack’s head lifted weakly, his eyes completely encased in tears, and reddening under the pressure, “ _God_ , I love you so much,” he cracked a fragile smile, never stopping to care how easily he’d said it. Leaning his forehead into Hiccup’s as he watched the aura-borealis of color flood across the bridge his nose. “You’re everything,” Jack closed his eyes, reaching his hands out to hold the other’s face, unable to prevent the declining proximity that was closing in around them so magnetically. “You were _always_ everything.” Jack’s voice was straining, and he could feel Hiccup shifting the soft pressure of his fingers, sliding them up his chest while a series of shivers chased after them.

“But I’m not anything with out you, Jack,” he replied. 

The words were so ordinary, but the feeling they evoked was anything but; and within seconds, Jack could feel time beginning to lag as the song faded through the riffs of the wind. 

Hiccup’s arms hung loosely around his neck, and Jack was still holding his face in his hands. Their eyes were wide open, and their breathing was thrown off. Their hearts beat rapidly out of sync—and neither of them could disengage. The darkness was cloaking them—concealing them from the world—and they slipped into their shared skin—never failing to get lost so effortlessly in each other.  And there was only one other thing Jack wanted. 

“Can I…” then a pause as his face inclined a little closer, “…can I kiss you?”

His voice dropped so shyly, producing the most innocent sound, and against the pale, milky pigmentation of his skin, his ears had gone visibly darker as Jack’s cheeks were flushed with forty different feverish shades. 

“Since when do you ask?” Hiccup observed, imploring as his lips moved teasingly against the very edges of Jack’s, just enough to make one of his hands slide up and furrow more intimately into auburn hair. 

“Good point,” Jack mumbled, angling his head and sinking forward with all the tenderness of a first kiss. Warm, uncontrollably heated sensations beginning to swell in his loins and he parted Hiccup’s lips so slowly at first—savoring the intoxicating effects that quickly became insatiable. 

Holding his face more firmly, Jack pulled ever so slightly on the handful of hair that was tangling through his fingers and eased Hiccup’s mouth open a little wider as he bit down gently on his bottom lip.

A surprised, breathy noise escaped the green eyed boy, simultaneously extending into a drawn out groan when Jack slid his teeth along the smooth surface, applying just the right amount of pressure as he drew Hiccup’s body against his own. The auburn haired youth gave into the contact instantly, repositioning his hands on either side of Jack’s stomach in a squeeze, presseing his slightly smaller frame into the defined curves of the other’s able body. 

“How are you so perfect,” Hiccup spoke into him, never disconnecting from the kiss as Jack’s hand pulled harder at his hair, unwrapping the other from the boy’s jawline and slinking his arm around Hiccup’s back—wasting no more than a second before he lifted every inch of him closer and angled their entangled bodies backward against the side of the ravine. “How are you so irresistible?” Jack countered, with his eyes still closed, pressing his lips softly, then harder as Hiccup’s grip around his hips got tighter. 

And then words became lost as their tongues tangled in place of syllables or sounds, and traced sensual swirling patterns as they moved in sync with the pulling and the pressing of eager, long awaiting lips. 

Every inch of Jack shivered, and his torso was forced noticeably forward when he felt Hiccup’s fingers collide with his skin, sliding along the length of his slender stomach as he secured Jack’s sweatshirt, and began lifting it in the opposite direction. Jack’s body followed suit without ever needing any instruction, instinctively raising his arms above his head, proceeding to open his eyes long enough to stare Hiccup down, surrounding him with that deliciously sexy smirk that stitched across his perfect lips so unfairly. 

Hiccup dropped the article of clothing somewhere off to the side, narrowing his eyes in on Jack’s mouth before mirroring his expression, “You know how I hate unnecessary things,” he formed an unpredictable smile, a smile that only drew Jack’s devilishly closer. 

“All you had to do was ask,” he whispered against Hiccup’s ear, with the side of his face pressed alongside the other’s, “but I must admit,” he purred, sweeping stray strands of hair out of the way and claiming the space on Hiccup’s neck, “it’s kind of turning me on more that you didn’t.”

“ _Ah—”_ Green eyes closed and the response was lost the second he felt the other’s mouth, all soft and wet, surrounding the small sensitive area on his neck right where it met the beginning of his jaw. Hiccup’s head rolled back, and his breathing grew strained and heavy; meanwhile, Jack formed a self-satisfied grin as he continued sucking at the exposed flesh, causing little dimples to form in his cheeks. 

 _God, I must be dreaming,_ Jack thought, still not fully grasping that this was all really happening, and biting down, just a little, awaiting the reaction from Hiccup to remind him it was. 

“ _Jackkk…”_ and the reaction was both acoustically and visually stimulating as Jack withdrew from the damp, deepening purple smudge long enough to watch his name roll off the other boy’s tongue in such arousing frustration. 

Green eyes reopening lustfully, and Hiccup reached for Jack’s abdomen, reconnecting their bodies and sliding his palms along the exposure of his back, gripping the shapely protrusion of shoulder blades as he returned the kiss fervently. 

“C’mon,” Jack complained suddenly, releasing an oxygen-deprived breath, “you’re gong to make this impossible to stop.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” the other offered, unable to ignore the blood rushing to everywhere but their brains, invasively outlining every inch of them. 

Jack groaned, feeling the form-fitting fabric of his pants growing tighter, “We should really wait,” he insisted, knowing how dangerously impulsive the heat of the moment could become. 

“But it feels like I’ve been waiting for forever,” Hiccup admitted shyly, disengaging from the contact to look into Jack’s eyes as he spoke. 

“Don’t remind me,” blue eyes pleaded as he started to lose more conviction amidst the unbreakable tension that had been building for years.  

As the confusion settled in plainly across Hiccup’s face, Jack watched his eyes search his own self-consciously. “Did I…did I do something wrong?” his bottom lip trembled just enough to be noticeable, so Jack covered them gently with his to reassure the worried looks. 

“Of course not,” he said soothingly, smoothing down the other’s tousled hair, “you’re clearly doing everything a little _too_ _well_ ,” Jack grinned, red-faced at the obvious _elations._

However the humor was lost to Hiccup. “I don’t understand,” he glanced at the ground, withdrawing from the other boy’s touch. 

Jack sighed, but couldn’t ignore that it was the right thing to do; as a guardian, it was his job to _protect_ innocence, not _compromise_ it—even his own. So, as Hiccup’s face flushed in and out of focus, Jack knelt down to retrieve his sweatshirt, concealing the slim curvature of his stomach as he slipped it over his head and shrugged inside. By that time, Hiccup had collapsed on the ground with his legs crossed and his head in his hands, and everything about it pulled relentlessly at Jack’s heartstrings. Kneeling down beside his friend, bright blue eyes dimmed and encased Hiccup sadly—knowing he, himself, had caused this. 

“Hey,” he broke the silence, but just barely enough to be heard. “Hey, c’mere,”Jack’s intonation fluctuated sensitively as he forced his arms around Hiccup’s stomach. 

“Am I…” Hiccup struggled both to form thoughts and eye contact, clenching his stomach muscles against the embrace, “Am I just not the way you remember me?”

Jack sat all the way down before responding, bringing the other boy’s back into his chest. “Please don’t take it the wrong way, Hiccup,” he rested his chin against his shoulder, “It’s got nothing to do with how you look, okay?” Jack punched his stomach playfully, knowing Hiccup’s insecurities all too well. “You’re still every bit as skinny as I’ve always liked you.”

Hiccup tipped his head back to glare. “Way to add insult to injury,” he sniffled, rubbing at his eyes. 

“Way to still take everything too personally,” the pallor boy squeezed his arms a little tighter to show it was lighthearted instead of spiteful. 

“Says the most easily offended person in the world,” the redhead rolled his eyes. 

There may have been some truth in that, but Jack didn’t rise to the bait. “It’s just that…this is the first time I’ve seen you in. Literally forever,” he redirected, breathing steadily as the rise and fall of his chest sank against Hiccup, “and there’s still so much I haven’t said, so much I want to say,” Jack rephrased, and he knew Hiccup understood when he curled into his side and adjusted to fit against him. 

“It has been a long time,” he agreed quietly, “ _too_ long.”

“I know,” Jack said into his hair, closing his eyes, “and I’ve missed you too damn much to mess this up,” he explained sincerely. 

“Since when have you ever cared about timing?” Hiccup implored, but not unkindly, resting his hands over the pair intertwined across his stomach. 

Jack shifted to refit the spaces between the other’s fingers instead of his own. “Since it became everything.”

Hiccup sighed this time, flattening himself out more until he was on his side in the snow and Jack was laying behind him, curling his knees up to cradle the empty space behind his own. The redhead had both hands beneath his head, folded almost prayer-like, while Jack encircled one around his upper body and draped the other over his hips. 

“I just want to take this slow,” he gazed downward, pulling Hiccup’s shirt back into place where it had ridden up.

“But why?”

“Because it took me too long to realize how special you are,” Jack breathed, shrinking into Hiccup vulnerably, “and that you deserve a lot better than me.”

“I don’t care what I _deserve_ ,” the smaller boy protested uncooperatively.

“Yeah? Well I do,” his grip tightened, and suddenly all the words were getting hard to say again. Suddenly they both felt so childlike and small—so impressionable and scared—melting back into their simplest form, and sinking once more into the silence of snowfall. 

Hiccup’s breathing slowly regulated and Jack could feel each inhale pull into him and every exhale take him farther away, developing the most adolescent fear of losing this all over again. 

“Why…” Hiccup finally broke the silence, fumbling through unfinished thoughts and unformed words, dragging one finger in circles through the snow. “Why do you care so much..why,” he paused nervously, “why do you always get like this—all soft and serious at the same time?”

Jack froze, accepting the soundlessness before he accepted the question. “Do you really even have to ask anymore?” he sighed, answering with another question because he’d never been asked to say it so many words before—explicit—irrevocable—fragile—words.

“Yes,” Hiccup’s stomach tightened as if to brace himself, “because you’ve never actually answered me before, honestly at least.”

“Honestly?” Jack repeated, curling even more closely into a source of  balance, “Honestly…” he inhaled with effort, and then exhaled in rigid intervals, as if he couldn’t keep his voice from catching. 

“Honestly _what_ , Jack?” Hiccup promoted gently, undeniably aware of how insecurely the other boy had tucked his head into the back of his neck—where he could feel every word hesitate to form. 

Jack closed his eyes, almost completely unable to stomach how hard it was to say out loud. Feeling susceptible and exposed as he pulled forward and his voice fell into a whisper, “Because, honestly, Hiccup, I’m in love with you.”

♪•*¨*•.¸¸♫¸¸.•*¨*•♪


	10. Chapter Ten.

**⦂⦊❮❬❰⟳Ͱ∀⍴₮⧢** ** **Ʀ.**** ⑩ **❱❭❯⦉⦂**

* * *

 This next part was the hardest—the part Jack already knew Hiccup couldn't reciprocate. The part where they'd have to drown just in order to breathe—to realize they'd already been pulled under—to understand they were never getting out unless they learned how to swim—to navigate through the currents that fought restlessly to tear them apart. And Jack stayed afloat just long enough to watch them sink.

" _In_  love?" Hiccup asked, as if for some reason that one, little word had morphed Jack's confession into a completely foreign concept.

In the simplest summarization—needless to say—this was not the reaction Jack had been hoping for; and the unreceptive question he'd received in place of a definite response caused his face to drain, and then simultaneously flood with color over the words he'd just let carelessly escape.

The combination had been hard enough to condense into a single sentence of actual words—let alone something he could elaborate and expand upon—and Jack felt as if he'd just handed a sappy, misconstrued love letter to the hottest girl in school; only to watch her eyes bulge judgmentally while shuffling it insincerely out of sight, where she never intended to open it.

"Don't make me say it again." He spoke in such a hushed, yet dominate voice—implying Hiccup's desire for repetition wouldn't translate into anything substantial anyways.

Hiccup exhaled gradually, reverting back to sarcasm when everything else failed to translate, "Way to take things  _slow_."

"Well you wanted an answer." Jack's whole face burned. "I never said you were going to  _like_  it."

Hiccup shifted, turning over until they were facing each other, "I never said I  _didn't_  like it either," he reasoned, "I just—"

"I know," Jack cut him off—knowing was easier than hearing him say it.

The redhead curled into the nape of his neck. "She's going to  _kill_  me."

Even with his arms wrapped around him, suddenly Jack felt misplaced—never realizing how differently the things he already knew came back to kick his ass as soon as he merged into Hiccup's world—and they all translated into reality.

" _Oh_ …"

_"…yeah."_

"Are you two…?"

"Yes..."

"Why didn't you say something  _earlier, **"**_  Jack blushed furiously, pulling back, suddenly so ungodly embarrassed for thinking he could just walk back into their old life, undisrupted. "You know," he continued, a little hostile, "before I poured my heart out for you to step all over? Or better yet," Jack pressed onward, now spitefully sarcastic. "How about before you decide to go and kiss me back for once? How about before the part where you took my shirt off and grabbed me like sex was going out of  _fucking_ style?" he demanded, getting up suddenly, and leaving the other on the ground to absorb everything he'd just as carelessly dropped.

A guilty expression crept up in his features, and Hiccup sat up, looking on an angle to face where Jack had risen a few feet away. "Because I completely forgot she existed as soon as I saw  _you_ ," he admitted embarrassedly, and oh-so out of character; it was certainly not very like  _Hiccup_  to misplace such obvious details, not so insensitively, and especially not for his own gain.

"But now that  _that's—that_  you can see her loud and fucking clear, huh?"

Hiccup blushed, "We had plans…"

Jack looked away, disinterested, "So?"

"For  _tonight_ ," the other emphasized, and Jack caught the drift.

It was the most dreadful, depleting sound. "And let me guess—you're still going?"

"She's my  _girlfriend_ , Jack," he tried to rationalize, getting to his feet.

" _So_?" He refused the other any advantage, "I thought I was supposed to be your  _best_ - _friend_?"

"You'll  _always_  be my best-friend," Hiccup corrected him, trying to step into him, but Jack only stepped away again.

"She's taking you away from me," the blue-eyed boy yelled back, feeling the tears freeze into place as they so often did when the rest was restricting.

" _God_ ," Hiccup breathed out, stopping to stare at him so disappointedly that it hurt, "Are you  _really_  that selfish?"

"Me?" Jack's neck snapped in his direction. "Really, Hiccup?  _Really_?" he stepped forward this time, forcefully establishing the height advantage that made him feel more in control. "You really want to talk to  _me_  about being  _selfish_ , right now?"

"Jack…"

" _No_ ," he continued to shake his head unreceptively, "You can't just do all this and then run back to  _her_. Not again."

"Jack it's not—."

"Fucking quit it, okay?" his head snapped back into focus, "Don't even start with all your fucking  _everything will be okay_  speeches, I don't want to hear it. Because they're not," he exhaled with great difficulty, unable to catch his breath, "it's  _not_  okay.  _I'm_  not okay."

Hiccup's eyes squinted even more heartbrokenly, "You know, I kind of wish I never came looking for you now."

And that time, the words hurt too much for Jack to ignore, "Hiccup," he released softly, trying so hard to be sensible, but the other could play dominant just as effortlessly as he could.

"Save it, Jack. I didn't spend all this time wanting to see you, just so you could scream in my fucking face, and make me feel like an asshole."

"Hiccup," he extended one last gesture, but the emerald-eyed boy slapped it straight to hell.

"How can you  _honestly_  stand here and act like you're the  _only_  one who had to lose something?" he asked, the sensation of tears swelling in his voice.

"Hiccup—please just—"

"Just what?  _Listen_?" he stared disbelievingly.

The other boy frowned, "I jus…"

"It's been  _three_  years, Jack.  _A lot_  has changed, I've  _changed_ ," Hiccup screamed back, encircling the other in a mixture of sadness and confusion. "Things are different. I watched you DIE for chris'sake, what did you expect?"

"It's not what I expected," Jack said softly, "it's what I  _didn't_."

Hiccup's eyes refocused, quelling the anger, "Didn't expect what?"

"You to move on so easily." The words weren't meant to be hurtful, not to the extent they drew the redhead down at least; but Jack had to admit, some part of him had hoped…had  _wanted_  to believe that coming back would be enough for him to forget her.

Emerald eyes fell to the floor, watching his feet curling into the snow, "Is that what you think I did?" he asked softly, not spitefully or angrily anymore, but attempting to hold himself together. "You think I just  _moved on_?" Then a laugh, a thick, pained, self-reflective expression of such evident falsity, "I  _wish_ it were that easy, Jack. I really do."

But Jack turned away from the noise, from the words, and from Hiccup. "She replaced me," his breath broke the air, so cold and clouded as it froze his face.

"No one could ever replace you," Hiccup stepped towards him, trying to convey this simply, but the complications had long since run their course. "And no one ever has."

"No one except for her—right?" Jack tacked on, stomaching his pride to sacrifice the pain of publicly humiliating himself—it was almost enough to make him withdraw almost completely back into isolation. After all,  _what was the point?_  Jack summarized,  _that's what he meant, even if he didn't say it, and I'm still in second place. Within the first few hours of becoming visible, I've already managed to fuck up everything…_ He released a deep, burdened sigh,  _just like old times—right?_

And suddenly this seemed more and more familiar— like a scene they'd both seen before. After the initial shock had worn away—and the magic had died—they were forced to confront the reality that things were no longer as they once were—a reality that they'd relived a hundred times, even before Jack's fall from grace.

 _Hiccup was out with Astrid again, and Jack was thoroughly unimpressed._ _**What's so great about her** _ _**anyways** _ _**that yesterday wasn't enough?** _ _Jack thought irritated._ _**What's so important that it's taking** _ _**all** _ _**fucking day?** _ _It seemed to the brunette that ever since she'd begun to share the secret that Hiccup was keeping a dragon instead of killing one, that the two of them had grown closer in such a short span of time—and Jack was feeling less and less special by the second._

_But it was weird—for both of them—because until then, they'd both been invisible. Well, Hiccup was invisible, and Jack just loved to spend time in his shadow, ignoring his own symmetry in favor of getting lost in the one he'd always liked better. It wasn't like that anymore though…because Astrid was slipping between the spaces and forcing Jack back into himself while she tried Hiccup on for size._

_**Way to conveniently start caring,** _ _Jack thought mentally towards her, both irritated and unreceptive towards the fact that she'd never given Hiccup the time of day before, but now she suddenly wanted to spend all of hers, alone, with him. And on one hand, he was annoyed because he knew Hiccup was enthralled with what he conveyed to Jack as 'progress', and what Jack thought was a sad excuse not to see through the dishonesty of what she was doing—which was, on the other, what made him so angry and so impervious to the idea that Astrid's interest could be genuine when Hiccup had loved her for forever, but it had taken a dragon for her to notice him._

 _And even though everything had been too recent to really bridge anything between her and Hiccup, Jack wondered how it could be so obvious to him, the one who never saw the parallels, and yet escape Hiccup so instantaneously—_ _**you're supposed to be the smart one,** _ _he sighed,_ _**why can't you see what she's doing, Hiccup?** _ _And in his mind, it was that simple—and Astrid was_ _**simply** _ _using him—twisting him—instilling the belief that he'd only now become interesting._ _And it didn't just bother him either, it made him angry too, so god damn angry, because nothing pissed him off more than when people tried to make Hiccup feel like he didn't belong, just because he was a little different—and when they disregarded every little detail of his personality and potential that Jack had always seen so clearly—had always loved the most._

_However, Hiccup seemed to forget all of that—forget that Jack had been his only friend till now—forget that she had only ever made his life an unbearable hell—forget that he stood out the most by just being himself; instead, he was too wrapped up in the idea that someone had put their faith in him. And even though Jack knew that it went without saying that he, of all people, would honor Hiccup's secret without question—he also knew that for Astrid, the decision was different, because it went against her entire way of life, and so there was something special about it, but that had just continuously made everything about it even worse._

_She had always been an 'outsider', but now she had broken through the surface—she had entered their world—uninvited—and suddenly it was as if Hiccup had someone_ _**else** _ _to share his secrets with—someone_ _**else** _ _who he wanted to spend constant time with—someone_ _**else** _ _who mattered on more than just any level—but most importantly, someone else who_ _**wasn't** _ _Jack._

 _**For real,** _ _he shook his head, glancing out his window at the sky that was shifting through shades of indigo and violet as the sun sank out of sight,_ _**that bitch better watch her back.** _

"Why do you  _insist_  on making it into a competition?" Hiccup's head shook, so frustrated he almost forgot to breathe—turning red from both the shortage and the context. "I swear to god—sometimes you're worse than she is," he added incredulously, falling back into this routine of theirs as if it were unbroken.

"Because," Jack argued stubbornly, too scorned and too cynical to ignore the awkward string of words he'd left hanging in the air earlier—unanswered, "You  _clearly_  made your choice."

And this time Hiccup was too infuriated to play the sensitivity card, and he shot back with a blow bellow the belt. "Well maybe if you didn't have to go and play hero then I never would of had to make it in the  _first_   _place_ ," he shouted. "Maybe if you would have  _talked_  to me instead of going all  _Jack_ —then we might've stood a chance."

Jack's face burned, "How  _dare_  you even use that against me right now," he said accusingly, "I'm sorry dying wasn't  _good enough_  for you, Hiccup. I'm sorry I didn't have enough time to  _think it through_."

"Well maybe you shouldn't be thinking about it at all," Hiccup said, clearly agitated as he fell back into the root of conversation, "It's not a competition. You're just different. The end."

"Yeah?" Jack challenged, "Well excuse  _me_ , but you can't act like what  _just_   _happened_   **didn't** — _just_   _happen_ , okay? So don't try and tell me you're not busy weighing us against each other in that overactive brain of yours. Or did you just forget that  _I'm_  the one who knows you so well?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" he glared suddenly, narrowing his eyes at the wording.

"That she never even noticed you until you  _did_  something, but I saw you before anyone else could," Jack's lower lip trembled, too overturned by the tumult of feelings they'd been forced to swallow in a single sitting.

Then Hiccup paused, mouth in mid motion, as if suddenly the same realization had smacked him in the face, losing all conviction in the chaos, and sinking back into himself at the sight of Jack in such emotional turmoil. "Hey," he reached forward softly, completing the gesture despite noticing how the other had flinched at its possibility, but not withdrawn when Hiccup's hand held onto his arm. "I…I didn't mean it Jack…for this…or for her…or….or any of it," he sighed, glancing down sadly. "It's just…too much…too soon…and until now…I thought you were dead."

Despite the immature inkling to rip away from Hiccup and scream at him rather than actually trying to rationalize this out, Jack forced himself to meet those expansive, green eyes he knew would melt everything back into focus. "I know," he reached out too this time, and pulled the other in close, even though a piece of him still feared rejection. "And I didn't mean…to…I don't know," his face flushed and furrowed at how he must interpret his feelings as if they were so hard to believe, "freak you out or anything."

"I know," Hiccup replied, hushing the embarrassment towards such blatant insensitivity, not fully understanding why he'd shone it to the person he was so ridiculously happy to have re-found. "And you didn't…freak me out, I mean," he added after a pause. "I should never have reacted like that."

"Maybe you were right to," Jack sighed, tucking Hiccup's head under his chin as he felt the other reposition, "we just….before all this….we just left things so—"

"— _Unfinished?_ " Hiccup cut him off.

Jack's arms squeezed tighter, "Exactly."

"So you understand" he tilted his head to the side, his eardrum pressed to Jack's chest, so closely he could hear his heartbeat as it quickened and protracted, "that this is still all new for me."

"No, that's what I don't get though," Jack posed sadly. "You seemed so into the idea earlier, and a thousand times before this, but then as soon as I say something about it, you act like I'm talking in another language," he pulled their bodies away, but only enough to establish eye contact, "How is it new, if its been going on since before I went away?" he finished, as if substituting death with a euphemism could make it any less permanent.

"Because I never fully understood the way I felt, or what was going on between us—with you all that time," Hiccup stared up simply, but then sensitively at the words, "and because you never told me you were  _in love_  with me before."

"Please, don't remind me that I did at all," Jack turned away, trying to dissuade the color on his face that was beyond his control, but felt a small, steady hand bringing it back into place.

"It's not that I don't love you," his hands tightened at the other's sides, "because I do. More than anything," he clarified, "And I should have said so—but…."

"But it's not the same for you," Jack finished. "It can't be. You're  _in_  love with  _her_." And as hard as he tried not to, it always sounded like an accusation.

Hiccup's eyes widened and pooled innocently, unaware of how to differentiate between the two things that meant so much to him, "I have been for half my life, you already knew that," and it was true, Jack knew,  _everybody_  knew. "And the way I love you is just…so different…" he concluded for a lack of better ways to define what had always been indefinable.

"I feel like  _such_  an idiot," Jack breathed out, closing his eyes.

" _I'm_  the idiot," Hiccup insisted, "I'm the one who knew and didn't care. I'm the one who let you kiss me, because I'm the one who wanted you to," he stood on his tip-toes, "and because I'm the one who never wanted it to stop," he confessed, brushing his lips against Jack's. "And I  _still_  don't want it to."

That  _had_ , however, taken Jack by surprise—the honesty—the action—the willingness to go backwards after they'd shot forward inconceivably into disarray and hostility—by the fact that Hiccup hadn't tried to take any of it back—or pretend he wanted it to go away at all. "Then what  _do_  you want," Jack dipped down, returning the exchange with his lips lingering just a little longer.

"To figure this out," the other wrapped his arms around his friend's neck, because close was never close enough, "to figure  _us_  out…"

 


End file.
